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By any measure, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary phenomenon. It took place over the course of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs did not champion them. The rock journalism had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were struggling to pack even a smaller London venue such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had debuted on the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a much larger and more diverse audience than usually displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the melody of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing underneath it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to the majority of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds quite distinct from the standard indie band set texts, which was completely correct: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his main inspirations were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The smoothness of his performance was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing groove, his jumping riffs that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the vocal melody or Squire’s wah-pedal-heavy playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s snaking, driving bassline. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a little bit stiff”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the layers of hard rock-influenced guitar and “returning to the groove”.

He likely had a point. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often occur during the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the lethargy of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly trying to add a bit of energy into what’s otherwise just some unremarkable country-rock – not a style anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a disastrous headlining set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a slump after the cool reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became dubbier, weightier and increasingly distorted, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the front. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the star turn on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, clubbable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park using a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything more than a long series of hugely lucrative gigs – a couple of new tracks put out by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had proved impossible to recapture nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on angling, which furthermore provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a aim to break the standard commercial constraints of indie rock and reach a wider mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate effect was a kind of rhythmic change: following their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”