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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and extraordinary thing. It unfolded during a span of 12 months. At the start of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely ignored by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. Influential DJs wasn’t a fan. The music press had barely mentioned their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a smaller London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were huge. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the main attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely imaginable situation for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can identify any number of causes why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, clearly drawing in a much larger and more diverse audience than typically showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their appearance – which appeared to connect them more to the burgeoning dance music scene – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the lead guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a world of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the incontrovertible truth that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section grooved in a way completely different from 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 old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing behind it really didn’t: you could dance to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s indie discos. You somehow got the impression that the percussionist Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the standard indie band set texts, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great Motown-inspired and groove music”.

The smoothness of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from Motown stomp into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the singing 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, relentless bass. When you recall She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that springs to mind is the bass line.

Indeed, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses stumbled artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a strong supporter of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its weaknesses could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “returning to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often coincide with the moments when Mounfield was truly given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise some unremarkable folk-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably energising impact on a band in a slump after the tepid reception to 1994’s rock-y Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His tone became dubbier, heavier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still present – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to bring his bass work to the front. His percussive, mesmerising bass line is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the best album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, sociable presence – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – 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 moniker of Slade’s preposterously coiffured and permanently smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion failed to translate into anything more than a lengthy series of hugely profitable concerts – two fresh singles released by the reformed quartet served only to prove that whatever spark had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to recapture nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly declared his departure from music in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore provided “a great reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d achieved plenty: he’d certainly left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering attitude, while Britpop as a movement was shaped by a desire to transcend the usual commercial constraints of alternative music and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had done. But their clearest immediate effect was a sort of rhythmic shift: in the wake of their early success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who wanted to make their fans move. That was Mani’s musical raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, aren’t they?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”