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By any 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 just a regional source of buzz in Manchester, largely overlooked by the traditional outlets for alternative rock in Britain. John Peel wasn’t a fan. The rock journalism had barely covered 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 big draw on that week’s Top of the Pops – a scarcely conceivable situation for most alternative groups in the end of the 1980s.

In retrospect, you can find numerous causes why the Stone Roses forged a unique trajectory, obviously drawing in a far bigger and broader audience than typically showed enthusiasm for alternative rock at the time. They were set apart by their look – which appeared to connect them more to the expanding acid house scene – their cockily belligerent demeanor and the talent of the guitarist John Squire, openly masterful in a scene of fuzzy aggressive guitar playing.

But there was also the undeniable fact that the Stone Roses’ bass and drums swung in a way entirely unlike any other act in British alt-rock at the time. There’s an argument that the tune of Made of Stone bore a distinct resemblance to that of Primal Scream’s early C86-era single Velocity Girl, but what the rhythm section were playing behind it certainly did not: you could move to it in a way that you could not to most of the songs that graced the decks at the era’s alternative clubs. You somehow got the impression that the drummer Alan “Reni” Wren and the bassist Gary “Mani” Mounfield had been raised on sounds quite distinct from the standard indie band influences, which was completely correct: Mani was a huge 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 hidden ingredient behind the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut album: it’s Mani who drives the moment when I Am the Resurrection transitions from soulful beat into free-flowing groove, his octave-leaping riffs that put a spring in the step of Waterfall.

At times the sauce was quite obvious. On Fools Gold, the centerpiece 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 snaking, relentless bassline. When you think of She Bangs the Drums, the first thing that comes to thought is the low-end melody.

Indeed, in Mani’s view, 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 little bit stiff”. He was a staunch supporter of their oft-dismissed second album, Second Coming but believed its flaws could have been rectified by removing some of the overdubs of hard rock-influenced guitar and “reverting to the rhythm”.

He may well have had a point. Second Coming’s handful of highlights often coincide with the instances when Mounfield was really allowed to let rip – Daybreak, Love Spreads, the superb Begging You – while on its more sluggish songs, you can sense him metaphorically willing the band to pick up the pace. His performance on Tightrope is completely at odds with the listlessness of all other elements that’s going on on the track, while on Straight to the Man he’s clearly attempting to inject a bit of pep into what’s otherwise just some nondescript country-rock – not a genre anyone would guess anyone was in a rush to hear the Stone Roses attempt.

His attempts were in vain: Wren and Squire departed the band in the wake of Second Coming’s launch, and the Stone Roses imploded completely after a disastrous top-billed performance at the 1996 Reading festival. But Mani’s subsequent role with Primal Scream had an impressively energising effect 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 dubbier, weightier and more fuzzy, but the swing that had provided the Stone Roses a unique edge was still in evidence – particularly on the laid-back rhythm of the 1997 single Kowalski – as was his skill to push his playing to the front. His popping, hypnotic bass line is very much the highlight on the brilliant 1999 single Swastika Eyes; his playing on Kill All Hippies – like Swastika Eyes, a standout of Xtrmntr, undoubtedly the finest album Primal Scream had produced since Screamadelica – is superb.

Always an friendly, clubbable figure – the writer John Robb once observed that the Stone Roses’ hauteur towards the press was invariably punctured if Mani “became more relaxed” – he performed at the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion show at Manchester’s Heaton Park playing a customised bass that displayed the legend “Super-Yob”, the moniker of Slade’s outrageously coiffured and constantly smiling axeman Dave Hill. Said reformation did not lead to anything more than a long succession of hugely profitable concerts – a couple of fresh singles put out by the reconstituted four-piece only demonstrated that any magic had existed in 1989 had proved unattainable to recapture nearly two decades later – and Mani discreetly declared his retirement in 2021. He’d made his money and was now focused on fly-fishing, which furthermore provided “a great excuse to go to the pub”.

Perhaps he felt he’d done enough: he’d definitely left a mark. The Stone Roses were influential in a variety of ways. Oasis certainly took note of their confident attitude, while the 90s British music scene as a whole was shaped by a aim to transcend the usual market limitations of indie rock and reach a more mainstream audience, as the Roses had achieved. But their clearest immediate effect was a kind of groove-based change: following 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, right?” he once stated. “That’s what they’re for.”