Darin went through a major change after meeting the late Senator Robert Kennedy."He campaigned for him,"said Blauner."He'd be on the plane with him and they'd sing together.When the assassination happened, Bobby freaked out. He went to the graveside to wait for ther body. He went over to Ressurrection City and played for people there. He told me he had a vision at the gravesite-- some weird religious experience that made him stop working."
Darin sold all his possessions and took off for Big Sur, on the California coastline, where he lived in a trailer home for a year. He would go to the library at Carmel to read.
In 1969, back to Los Angeles, Darin formed his own record company, Direction. He now was wearing blue jeans and was back on club stages working with a simple backup band. He wrote protest songs and fought with Jackie Gleason, over a song he had written about the discovery of bodies at an Arkansas prison farm that he wanted to sing on Gleason's TV show. He put out an album, Born Walden Robert Cassotto.
Darin wanted an acceptance he never received. Blauner said he advised Darin against the various shifts."But he just loved music. He said if people couldn't accept him for what he was, it was their problem."Darin had his own: his heart. And after the first operation had been declared a success,he bounced back,into clubs, into a tuxedo,into a strong brass backup sound."Bobby,"said Gershenson,"had resolved the fact in his own heart that the kind of human being you are is not changed or defiled in any way by the clothes you wear."He got his own lifetime ambition: A TV show of his own, a summer replacement show for Dean Martin in 1972. He seemed to be on his way again.
Dick Clark was a friend of Darin's back when Bobby was on Decca, without hits.
"I used to laugh when people told me how Bobby was an arrogant little son of a bitch,"said Clark,"but if you knew him he was the kindest, gentlest person.He had a great native intellect, and if he was only healthy physically, he probaley could have gone on to be a legend."
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