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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It took place during a span of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly overlooked by the established outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The music press had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to fill even a smaller London club 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 draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the late 80s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly attracting a much larger and broader crowd than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music movement – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way completely unlike anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an point that the tune of Made of Stone sounded quite similar to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the songs that featured on the decks at the era’s indie discos. You in some way got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on music quite distinct from the standard indie band set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ bassist Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from Motown stomp into loose-limbed funk, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song isn’t really the singing or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, relentless bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was underwhelming, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but thought its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “returning to the groove”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is totally contrary to the lethargy of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a some pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript folk-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising effect on a band in a slump after the cool response to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly distorted, but the swing that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his playing to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic low-end pattern is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Always an friendly, clubbable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback concert at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything beyond a long succession of hugely lucrative concerts – a couple of fresh singles released by the reformed four-piece only demonstrated that any magic had been present in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture 18 years on – and Mani discreetly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which additionally offered “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Maybe he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a whole was informed by a desire to transcend the standard market limitations of alternative music and attract a more general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest direct influence was a kind of groove-based change: in the wake of their early success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”