Groovy

The 59th Street bridge (officially the Queensboro Bridge), goes over the East River in New York City, connecting Queens to Manhattan. Simon & Garfunkel are from New York, which has a very hectic pace. In this song they remind us to slow down and appreciate the simple pleasures in life, like cobblestones and flowers. When he performed at Tufts University in 1966, Simon said of this song: “I spent most of the year 1965 living in England, and at the end of that year in December, I came back to the United States, ‘The Sound Of Silence’ had become a big hit, and I had to make this adjustment from being relatively unknown in England to being semi-famous here, and I didn’t really swing with it. It was a very difficult scene to make, and I was writing very depressed-type songs until around June of last year. I started to swing out of it, I was getting into a good mood, and I remember coming home in the morning about 6 o’clock over the 59th Street Bridge in New York, and it was such a groovy day really, a good one, and it was one of those times when you know you won’t be tired for about an hour, a sort of a good hanging time, so I started to write a song that later became the 59th Street Bridge Song or Feelin’ Groovy.” The Queensboro Bridge is notoriously noisy and mechanical. You walk on metal graters that vibrate as the traffic zooms by, creating a dangerous and exciting sensation. This could be the background for “Slow down, you move too fast…” Despite being one of Simon & Garfunkel’s best-known songs, this was never a hit for them. However in 1967 a more pop-oriented version by Harpers Bizarre with higher vocals peaked at #13 in the US and #34 in the UK.  This is one of the first uses of the word “Groovy” in a popular song. It gave the songwriters Carole Bayer Sager and Toni Wine inspiration for the first “Groovy” hit: “A Groovy Kind Of Love.”