The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #29032   Message #2765119
Posted By: Jim Dixon
12-Nov-09 - 06:43 PM
Thread Name: Help: Missing Dylan song about John Henry Faulk
Subject: RE: Help: Missing Dylan song on John Henry Faulk
From Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957-1973 by Clinton Heylin (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2009), page 92:

{65} GATES OF HATE
{66} THAT CALIFORNIA SIDE
Both songs have survived only on paper and each only as a single verse, but they appear to date from the summer of 1962.
#65 published in
Sing Out! Oct./Nov. 1962.
#66 published in
Isis #28.

Here are two more lost songs written within weeks of a WBAI radio interview with Pete Seeger, in which Dylan claimed he wrote songs before breakfast. "Gates of Hate" is mentioned (and quoted) in Gil Turner's Sing Out! profile, whereas "That California Side" was written on a scrap of paper—the other side of a shop receipt dated June 22, 1962. "That California Side" contrasts the joys of California with the East Coast, a subject he would tackle again on "California" (cut at the first Bringing It...session in January 1965 and frequently bootlegged). Dylan's repeated crossings-out suggest a general dissatisfaction with where a song is going, and it probably died there and then, as he sat in a café scribbling to his heart's content.

On the other hand, "Gates of Hate" probably was finished, though all that is known of it derives from Gil Turner's Sing Out! feature. According to Turner the song was about John Henry Faulk, who was then married to folksinger Hedy West. On June 28, 1962, Faulk had been awarded $3.5 million in damages in a libel suit against AWARE, a "clearance" service that vetted people in the entertainment industry for any left-wing inclinations or Communist affiliations. The chorus of the song, quoted in Turner's piece, suggests Dylan was closing in on "Masters of War":It also suggests a likely source for any tune: Ewan MacColl's "Go Down You Murderers"—a favorite as far back as his student days in St. Paul.