Bobby Darin
Beyond the Sea...Beyond the Music

Time For Change

Darin himself was swinging in a more liberal direction, but no longer swinging with a big band. Rather than overly concern himself with uninspiring movie roles like the one he accepted in the film Cop Out (released in England as Stranger In The House), Darin was much more keen on spending his energy campaigning for Senator Robert F. Kennedy, with whom he'd been acquainted since the early '60s. When the younger Kennedy brother announced his run for the Presidency in 1968, Darin was behind him all the way. And when Kennedy was killed, Darin (already deeply troubled by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, with whom he was also personally acquainted) became uncharacteristically withdrawn, his music further affected by these tragedies.

"He was very tormented. This was in the wake of RFK [being shot]," said Dodd. "He was with RFK the day before he was assassinated. Like everything he did, he'd get into it full-bore, and be immersed in it. And it was just really shocking. He went nuts, essentially, when he heard the news. And that was a very hard time for him.

"It began a process of introspection about everything he did, what he stood for. He went to Big Sur, lived near the beach in a little trailer, ran his own electricity, did woodwork, had very little to do with the show business world, and tried to find out what was important to him. He sold a lot of his possessions, gave a lot of stuff away, and was trying to make a change.

"And I think it was good for him," Dodd said. "Nobody really knew who he was up there. He was just a regular guy, He got his mail under the name Cassotto, drove a little Toyota. Basically, he just dropped out to take stock of what he wanted to do next. It was his 'hippie period,' his time to reevaluate. But it was not something driven by fad or style. The RFK thing was devastating. I guess, clinically, he was probably depressed. It was a very difficult time."

Darin wrote the somber song "In Memoriam" in tribute to RFK and included it on his highly personal album Bobby Darin Born Walden Robert Cassotto, released on his own label. Direction, in September. Darin assigned catalog numbur 1936, the year of his birth, to the album, which he produced himself. The following summer, 1969, Darin's next self-produced Direction LF appeared. Commitment, only now the singer was identifying himself as "Bob Darin," not Bobby. RFK had been called Bobby, too. Now both Bobby's were gone. Darin's view of life and music had turned serious, and he didn't feel like having fun, particularly not with his old swingy image burdening his conscience.

"When he became Bob Darin," Dodd said, "a lot of people said, 'Oh, he's selling out 'cause that tuxedo stuff's over.' But I don't believe that. He looked around, he saw the civil rights movement, he saw Vietnam, he saw the sexual revolution, and he said, 'Why the %#&* am I singing "Mack the Knife"? I have something to say, and 1 want to say it.' Everybody vilified him. The press and the public hated him. But he [genuinely] felt it.

"I think he would've stayed with that, if people would have accepted him, and he could've paid his bills. But he went back and put on the tuxedo, because he had medical problems. And 'Bob Darin' was not gonna sell out Vegas showrooms. 'Bobby Darin' would. He was clever, and I think he finally found a balance. He was comfortable [with his act] and I think, had he lived, he would have gotten the respect and the credibility that a Tony Bennett or a Sinatra has. Or even a Tom Jones, for that matter."

Dick Clark takes partial credit for convincing Darin to backtrack a bit, including reverting to the name by which he'd become known. "I'm sure a lot of people had a hand in that," he said, "but I was perhaps one of the most vocal, because I had nothing to lose. All he could do was yell at me, You know, I've had that (type of] relationship with a handful of artists over the years. It was as close as you can get with him, because we got into discussions of our personal lives, which I hadn't done with a lot of people. So, I felt very firm in our friendship. And if there was ever anything that I needed, he'd be there to help me, and to do it for me. It was tight."

Years after Darin had left Capitol, Venet still remained friends with him and would join him for some of his live gigs, in Vegas especially.  In the time after he started the Direction label, and before he underwent his first heart surgery in 1971, Darin refused to wear a traditional black tuxedo for his engagements, wearing a denim tux instead, or just completely dressing down. He wouldn't bother to wear his hairpiece (which he'd taken to using to cover his thinning pate) and doing a lot of his newer, downbeat, material in favor of his familiar hits and smooth standards. Venet stuck with him through the difficult days, understanding that Darin was a true artist, and not merely a crowd pleaser,

"He wanted the phrasing and the emotion that Paul McCartney put into 'Blackbird'," Venet said. "I have nine reels of tape of him singing 'Blackbird,' singing along with Paul McCartney's [Beatles] record. He did it until he could turn the record off anyplace, and then continue. And if you backed the record up against his tape, he would sync-in perfect. And then, once he got the phrasing and the feel down, he would go do his thing to it. He'd take it to another level, to the Bobby Darin level.

"So, he wasn't copying people. He was inspired by people and he would study them. An interesting thing is, if you've ever heard the original version of 'Mack the Knife,' it was a dirge. And first he learned to sing it the way they did it in the Threepenny. And then he took it from there.

"You see, he had some genius to him," Venet said. "He would start from the ground, and go on up. You have to give him credit. He didn't come up with everything in 30 seconds. He labored over something like 'Dream Lover.' Everybody thought it sounded all smooth and easy, but that's how good he was. This guy labored.

"I mean, the guy made it look easy, but Fred Astaire used to do that too, and I hear that he worked on it all the time. He was [like] an athlete. With his bad heart and his frail condition, the son of a bitch used to work as hard as anybody I've ever seen in my life. He really worked for it.  But he was talented."

Darin had acted in a film in 1969 called The Happy Ending which was directed by Richard Brooks (also responsible for screen adaptations of Lord Jim and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood). Darin was fascinated by the artistry and skill exhibited by Brooks as a director, and wanted to try his own hand as a filmmaker. He came up with a story idea that paralleled his life in the music field. Darin put a lot of himself into his movie project, but unfortunately never saw it come to fruition, as he was unable totally finish it or put it out in his remaining years.

"The Vendors is a film about a songwriter who is looking to break through," Dodd said. "And the film was god-awful. We laugh and say, 'It was half a million dollars' worth of therapy for him,' He took his own money, wrote the screenplay, cast it, wrote the music, directed it—did everything but act in it. And this is how he was. He would get an idea, or a whim, and he'd just go for it. And that's why many people always looked at him or what he was doing, and never knew what was coming next.

"One day he was a music publisher, the next day he was acting, whatever. He always knew the clock was ticking, and he didn't have a second to waste. The film was never released. The gentleman who is exec-producing for Warners the Darin story—-God willing, it'll get made-—was once a film distributor and was called in to see Renaldo And Clara by Bob Dylan. And he said to me that the only film he's ever seen in all his years that was worse than Renaldo And Clara was The Vendors. So, it was a disaster. He spent a lot of his time and money on it.

"It wasn't autobiographical, although there's a side to it that is, in one respect," Dodd said. "The character in the film finally gets a deal with some New York music publishers. But what they want him to do is tone down the lyrics, tone down the protest element and be more commercial. The character wrestles with that. In a sense, what he was trying to express was kind of where he was at in his own career. This was around the time where he was absolutely freakin' booed off the stage at the Landmark [Hotel in Vegas], when he was Bob Darin and doing protest music. They hated him. People were going [expecting] to see Bobby Darin, and what Bobby Darin did—'Mack the Knife,' 'Beyond the Sea' and all that. Part of the character was based on that, but it was not directly autobiographical."

"He was a very tormented man when I saw him in the late '60s," said Dick Clark, "He was screwed up. He was making a film that didn't work, he was disappointed in a lot of things that were going on, and he was totally frustrated."

One of the most important songs written by Darin in the latter part of his career was "Simple Song of Freedom," which was first recorded by Hardin, and charted higher than any other single recording of his (at #50).  Darin would perform the song in his own act, usually closing with it and finishing up by telling the audience, "Don't ever let anyone take away your freedom."

The Man and His Music

In 1971, having made his statements on his own label, Darin signed a new label deal, this one with Motown. The live album from the Desert Inn was intended to be his first release on Motown but was held back, and nothing but a lone single came out until the summer of 1972, an album titled as simply as his very first Atco LP, Bobby Darin. It included his versions of "Let It Be Me," "Hard Headed Woman" and Randy Newman's "Sail Away," the latter a magnificent gospelish recording, and one of the best contemporary-sounding records Darin ever made. (He also wrote a song with Newman, "Look At Me.") But this album would be the only one released by his last record company, until after his death on December 20,1973.

At the end of his career, near the end of his life, Darin called Blauner, with whom he had always kept in contact anyway, and asked his old friend if he would come back and manage him again. Blauner warned him that things were different and that Darin "wasn't number one anymore," but they worked out an arrangement and Blauner did return. During the last year of Darin's life, Blauner got him a deal whereby he was making $75,000 a week performing in Las Vegas. A lot of Darin's earnings ended up going to meet his huge medical bills, but he had friends and family around him at the end.

"The big fight I would have with Bobby," Blauner said, "was that I would say to him, 'Bobby, they will not allow you to be all things to music.' How nice it is to be wrong. We never had a contract. It was a handshake. It was a comet ride, is what it was. A lot of people took him the wrong way. He was totally unique,"

The consensus among people who knew Darin or worked with him seems to be that, while he wasn't exactly a choir boy and was often in a great big hurry, he was idealistic and a pretty good guy,

"That's not to make him an angel, as Blauner could tell you," Dodd said, "He could be a mean, calculating prick, rest his soul. He knew how to push buttons. He had a dark side to him that was vicious. But he would never inflict that on those that were downtrodden. He was not the type to kick you when you were down.

Darin's son, then age 11, recalled being in Las Vegas for his father's final performances there in August 1973. Dodd said that, even though his father had been ill before, the way he finished up the last show indicated to everyone around him that the end was near.   He never said that he was giving up for good, but he was unable to continue on to fulfill his next set of shows in Reno, and his friends and the musicians seemed to sense that Darin would not perform again. Four months later, he died in the hospital in L.A., hoping against hope that another operation might prolong his life.

"I have that show, actually, on a very crudely-made tape, which he recorded," Dodd said. "He'd always do that, to listen to what worked and what didn't. You listen to it now and it's eerie. Because what you hear is him talking about how great he'd been treated in his 15 years goin' to Vegas. He was saying that he'd never been treated better and he never felt so welcome. He talked about Elvis, who was opening the showroom the next night. He joked, saying, 'I look out there and see the room half-filled and I cry, because tomorrow night I know the rafters will be filled. But, Elvis is the king.'

"He was very melancholy, very emotional. He was very ill. But you never knew that when he worked. And he would never let anyone know. After the show, he'd make sure he had it together before he'd greet people. He was very concerned that people not realize how sick he was.

Two months after Darin's death, Motown released the album Darin 1936-1973, which contained mostly unreleased material, including some live tracks. It was almost another 15 years, with the advent of the CD, that Darin's music finally experienced some kind of revival. Now with the Rhino boxed set, the width and breadth of Darin's love affair with music can be fully appreciated for the first time. To Darin, all music had a oneness to it that the true connoisseur cannot split apart into little categories. It was just one thing, and it was something magical, something wonderful.

"I like very much the diversity on that collection," Dodd Darin said. "To have all this in one set, to me, is awesome. I'm just thrilled. What they tried to do is get a good blend of all of it. And I know for years Capitol, and actually Atlantic also, didn't want to release certain stuff. I'm happy we're getting these 96 songs out, that they're willing to do this. 'Cause I have always felt—and not to denigrate any other artist—that his [boxed set] was long overdue. He should have it. Obviously, an artist of Presley's stature is going to dwarf him, but I've never fully understood why that has been.

"He had a decent relationship with Presley," Dodd said. "They used to see each other, like in August of 73, when my dad closed and Elvis opened. They would have a bite to eat, and they were kind of friends. But they were two very different people. My dad was kind of 'uptown,' and kind of intellectual. And Elvis was different, a simpler guy. But yet, they had good relations. And in fact, Presley had mentioned that my dad was one of his favorite singers, that he'd listen to.

"There's a disparity in recognition, obviously," Dodd said. "But I think he's been under-appreciated. He's just not gotten the credit he was due."

One can only speculate, of course, what Darin would be doing had he lived, whether he would have continued exploring new avenues in music, resigned himself to the oldies or Vegas circuits, or changed course completely, as he'd done so many times. Or perhaps he would have continued trying to do it all.

"I think he would probably be an entrepreneur," mused Dick Clark, "running a large record company and a movie studio, performing constantly, and so forth. He would probably be producing today's music on his label. He was a businessman, but he was very aware of public taste. So, whatever was comin' down the pike, no matter if it were alternative music or rap music, I'm sure he would've been there, having a hand in it.

"He was a kid from the big band era who could sing like a black artist, and also sing with a 20- or 30-piece band. I mean, those are divergent worlds that hated one another! And then he could make a little funky rock 'n' roll record. So, I'm sure his taste was broad enough to encompass today's music. I wish he were here. I miss him, and those of us who loved him always will."

Dedicated to the memory of Stephen G. Roeser, Jr.