Songfacts®:

• Singer Joe Strummer explained: "what sparked the song was that they started to put fencing around English football grounds. It looked horrible, like cages with the fans inside. It distressed me."
  
  His instincts were proven right a decade after the song was released when 96 fans were killed at a match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on April 15, 1989. The incident, which took place at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England, became known as the Hillsborough disaster.
• Like "Gates of the West," which was recorded around the same time, "Groovy Times" was first demoed in Utopia Studios for the Give 'Em Enough Rope sessions before being completed in Wessex in 1979 with Bill Price producing. Musically it is another subtle departure from The Clash's Punk roots, heavily dominated by acoustic guitars and harmonica (played apparently by Bob Jones - guitarist Mick Jones later said "That's me, it's a Bob Dylan joke").
• The lyrics: "I can remember his first appearance, now look what's happened to him. So they put him in a dog suit, like from 1964, the king of early evening TV" appear to be an amusing reference to TV presenter Bill Grundy, who's career spiraled downhill after he drunkenly goaded the Sex Pistols into swearing on prime time TV in 1976 in what became known as the Filth and the Fury scandal. By the time of "Groovy Times"' writing, he was presenting Sunday evening religious programmes.