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By any metric, the rise of the Stone Roses was a rapid and remarkable phenomenon. It unfolded over the course of one year. At the start of 1989, they were merely a regional cause of excitement in Manchester, largely overlooked by the established channels for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel did not champion them. The rock journalism had hardly covered their latest single, Elephant Stone. They were barely able to pack even a more modest London venue 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 attraction on that week’s Top of the Pops – a barely conceivable state of affairs for most indie bands in the end of the 1980s.

In hindsight, you can find numerous reasons why the Stone Roses cut such an extraordinary path, obviously attracting a far bigger and more diverse crowd than usually displayed an interest in indie music at the time. They were distinguished by their look – which seemed to align them more to the expanding dance music movement – their confidently defiant demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, unashamedly virtuosic in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ rhythm section swung in a way entirely unlike any other act 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 rhythm section were playing underneath it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to the majority of the songs that graced the turntables at the era’s alternative clubs. You in some way got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on music rather different to the usual indie band influences, which was absolutely correct: Mani was a huge admirer of the Byrds’ low-end maestro Chris Hillman but his guiding lights were “great northern soul and groove music”.

The fluidity of his performance 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 loose-limbed groove, his jumping lines that add bounce of Waterfall.

At times the ingredient wasn’t so secret. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece of the song is not the vocal melody or Squire’s effect-laden playing, or even the breakbeat taken from Bobby Byrd’s 1971 single Hot Pants: it’s Mani’s writhing, 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 view, when the Stone Roses stumbled musically it was because they were not enough groovy. Fools Gold’s disappointing successor One Love was lackluster, he suggested, because it “could have swung, it’s a somewhat stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws might have been fixed by cutting some of the layers of Led Zeppelin-inspired six-string work and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a valid argument. Second Coming’s handful of standout tracks usually coincide with the instances when Mounfield was really given free rein – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more turgid songs, you can sense him metaphorically urging the band to increase the tempo. His performance on Tightrope is totally contrary to the listlessness of all other elements that’s happening on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly trying to inject a some energy into what’s otherwise some nondescript country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess listeners was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were unsuccessful: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s release, and the Stone Roses imploded entirely after a disastrous top-billed set at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s next gig with Primal Scream had an impressively galvanising impact on a band in a decline after the cool reception to 1994’s guitar-driven Give Out But Don’t Give Up. His sound became more echo-laden, heavier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a point of difference was still in evidence – particularly on the low-slung rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his ability to bring his bass work to the front. His percussive, hypnotic low-end pattern is certainly the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his contribution on Kill All Hippies – similar to Swastika Eyes, a highlight of Xtrmntr, easily the finest album Primal Scream had made since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, sociable figure – the author John Robb once noted that the Stone Roses’ aloofness towards the press was always broken if Mani “let his guard down” – he took the stage at the Stone Roses’ 2012 comeback show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously styled and constantly grinning axeman Dave Hill. Said reunion did not lead to anything more than a lengthy series of extremely profitable concerts – a couple of fresh singles put out by the reconstituted quartet only demonstrated that any magic had existed in 1989 had turned out unattainable to recapture 18 years later – and Mani discreetly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d earned his fortune and was now more concerned with angling, which additionally provided “a good excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he thought he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were seminal in a range of ways. Oasis undoubtedly observed their swaggering approach, while Britpop as a movement was informed by a desire to transcend the standard market limitations of alternative music and reach a wider general public, as the Roses had done. But their most obvious immediate influence was a sort of groove-based shift: following their initial success, you abruptly couldn’t move for indie bands who aimed to make their fans dance. That was Mani’s artistic raison d’être. “It’s what the rhythm section are for, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”