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By any measure, the ascent of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable thing. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were merely a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had hardly 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 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 imaginable state of affairs for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find any number of reasons why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, clearly drawing in a far bigger and more diverse audience than typically displayed an interest in alternative rock at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which seemed to align them more to the burgeoning acid house movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly masterful in a world of distorted thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the incontrovertible fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely different from anything else in British alternative music at the time. There’s an argument that the melody of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s old C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the bass and drums were playing underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you simply couldn’t to most of the tracks that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way felt that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music quite distinct from the standard alternative group set texts, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and funk”.

The fluidity of his performance was the secret sauce behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album: it’s him who drives the point when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into loose-limbed groove, his octave-leaping lines that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. 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 borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving bass. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the initial element that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

In fact, in Mani’s opinion, when the Stone Roses went wrong musically it was because they were insufficiently groovy. Fools Gold’s underwhelming successor One Love was lackluster, he proposed, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their frequently criticized follow-up record, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by cutting some of the overdubs of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the groove”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of standout tracks usually coincide with the moments when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its increasingly sluggish songs, you can hear him metaphorically urging the band to pick up the pace. His playing on Tightrope is completely contrary to the lethargy of everything else that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to inject a some pep into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a style one suspects listeners was in a hurry to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band following Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed entirely after a catastrophic top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an remarkably galvanising effect on a band in a decline after the tepid reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and increasingly fuzzy, but the groove that had given the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – especially on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his bass work to the front. His popping, mesmerising bass line is very much the highlight on the fantastic 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the best album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is magnificent.

Consistently an friendly, sociable figure – the author John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “let his guard down” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s preposterously styled and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything more than a lengthy succession of hugely profitable gigs – a couple of new tracks put out by the reconstituted quartet served only to prove that whatever spark had been present in 1989 had turned out impossible to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani quietly announced his departure from music in 2021. He’d made his money and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally provided “a good reason to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d certainly made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly took note of their confident approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was informed by a desire to transcend the standard market limitations of alternative music and attract a wider general public, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate influence was a kind of groove-based shift: following their initial success, you abruptly encountered many alternative acts who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”