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By every metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a sudden and remarkable thing. It unfolded during a span of one year. At the beginning of 1989, they were just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, mostly 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 fill even a smaller London club such as Dingwalls. But by November they were massive. Their single Fools Gold had entered the charts at No 8 and their appearance was the main draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable situation for the majority of alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find any number of causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously attracting a far bigger and more diverse audience than usually showed enthusiasm for indie music at the time. They were set apart by their look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music scene – their confidently defiant attitude and the skill of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a world of fuzzy thrashing downstrokes.

But there was also the undeniable truth that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums grooved in a way entirely unlike anything else in British alt-rock 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 bass and drums were doing behind it really didn’t: you could move 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 got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been brought up on sounds quite distinct from the standard alternative group influences, which was absolutely right: Mani was a massive fan of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his playing was the hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ self-titled first record: it’s him who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection shifts from soulful beat into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

Sometimes the ingredient was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the focal point of the song is not the singing or Squire’s effect-laden guitar work, or even the drum sample borrowed from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, driving 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 view, when the Stone Roses went wrong artistically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing follow-up One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “needed more groove, it’s a little bit rigid”. He was a staunch defender of their oft-dismissed follow-up record, Second Coming but thought its flaws might have been fixed by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s scattering of highlights often occur during the instances when Mounfield was truly allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the excellent Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him figuratively willing the band to increase the tempo. His playing on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the song, while on Straight to the Man he’s audibly attempting to add a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a style anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses give a try.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire left the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses collapsed completely after a disastrous top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively energising impact on a band in a slump 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 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 bass work to the fore. His percussive, hypnotic bass line is certainly the highlight on the fantastic 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 superb.

Always an affable, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the media was invariably broken if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that bore the inscription “Super-Yob”, the nickname of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly smiling guitarist Dave Hill. This reunion did not lead to anything beyond a long succession of extremely lucrative concerts – a couple of new singles released by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that any spark had existed in 1989 had turned out impossible to rediscover nearly two decades on – and Mani quietly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore offered “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely made an impact. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis certainly observed their swaggering approach, while the 90s British music scene as a movement was shaped by a desire to transcend 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 shift: following their initial success, you suddenly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their audiences dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the bass and drums are for, aren’t they?” he once averred. “That’s what they’re for.”