The Merry Pranksters were a group of people who formed around American author
Ken Kesey in 1964. The group promoted the use of psychedelic drugs, then still
legal. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived
communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for
the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the
summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted
school bus called Furthur or Further. During this time they met many of the
guiding lights of the mid-1960s cultural movement and presaged what is commonly
thought of as hippies with odd behavior, long hair on men, bizarre clothing, and
a renunciation of the normal society, which they dubbed The Establishment. Tom
Wolfe chronicled their early escapades in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test;
Wolfe also documents a notorious 1966 trip on Further from Mexico through
Houston, stopping to visit Kesey's friend, novelist Larry McMurtry. Kesey
was in flight from a drug charge at the time. Notable members of the group
include Kesey's best friend Ken Babbs, Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia, Lee
Quarnstrom, and Neal Cassady. Stewart Brand, Paul Foster, the Warlocks, Del
Close, Wavy Gravy, Paul Krassner, and Kentucky Fab Five writers Ed McClanahan
and Gurney Norman were associated with the group to varying degrees.
These events are also documented by one of the original pranksters, Lee
Quarnstrom, in his memoir titled When I Was a Dynamiter.
Origin of name In an interview on BBC World Service in
August 2014, Ken Babbs suggested that the name The Merry Pranksters was his
idea: Kesey and George Walker and I were out
wandering around and the rest of the gang were sitting around a fire in
Kesey’s house in La Honda, and when we came back it was dark and Mike Hagen
called out "Halt! Who goes there?" And just out of the blue I said, "'Tis I,
the intrepid traveller, come to lead his merry band of pranksters across the
nation, in the reverse order of the pioneers! And our motto will be 'the
obliteration of the entire nation' ... not taken literally of course, we won’t
blow up their buildings, we’ll blow their minds!"
Membership = On the bus =
Although many other friends and associates of Kesey came and went to his
La Honda, California ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco,
the core group of what became the Merry Band of Pranksters who drove
cross-country were: Ken Kesey, author
Neal Cassady, driver, author Cathy Casamo, actress, girlfriend of
Larry Hankin Ron Bevirt, photographer
Ken Babbs, author John Babbs, Ken Babbs' older brother
Jane Burton Sandy Lehmann-Haupt, sound engineer
Paula Sundsten, girlfriend of Ken Babbs Mike Hagen, cameraman
George Walker Steve Lambrecht, businessman
Chuck Kesey, Ken's brother Dale Kesey, Ken's brother
Dr. Jimmy aka Acid Slim, friend from Santa Clara
= Off the bus = Other on-again, off-again Pranksters who
did not participate in the first cross-country journey include:
Roy Sebern, artist Carolyn Adams Garcia, wife of Jerry
Garcia and George Walker, mother of Ken Kesey's daughter Sunshine
Chloe Scott, dancer John Page Browning, light show operator
Gordon "Dass" Adams, Mountain Girl's brother
Anthony Dean Wells Denise Kaufman, musician with The Ace of
Cups Ron Boise, sculptor
Tom Wolfe, author Paul Foster, cartoonist
John Evenson Peter Demma, co-owner of Hip Pocket
Bookstore with Kesey Norman Hartweg, columnist
Bradley Hodgeman Margie Piaggio
Larry Hankin, actor Larry McMurtry, author
Stewart Brand, author and futurist Del Close, comedian & performance coach
Wavy Gravy, entertainer & activist Paul Krassner, author
The Warlocks, original name of The Grateful Dead
Lee Quarnstrom, author Ed McClanahan, author
Gurney Norman, author Linda Breen
Ray Donovan Slade, rock & roll manager, outlaw
Henry Belliveau Eastward bus journey
On June 17, 1964, Kesey and 13 Merry Pranksters boarded Furthur at Kesey's
ranch in La Honda, California, and set off eastward. Kesey wanted to see what
would happen when hallucinogenic-inspired spontaneity
confronted what he saw as the banality and conformity of American society. One
author has suggested that the bus trip reversed the historic American westward
movement of the centuries. The trip's original purpose was to
celebrate the publication of Kesey's novel Sometimes a Great Notion and to
visit the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. The Pranksters were enthusiastic
users of marijuana, amphetamines, and LSD, and in the process of their journey
they are said to have "turned on" many people by introducing them to these
drugs. The stated destination of the
psychedelically painted bus - "further" - was the Merry Pranksters' goal: a
destination that could only be obtained through the expansion of one's own
perceptions of reality. Novelist Robert Stone, who met the bus
on its arrival in New York, has written [in his memoir Prime Green: Remembering
the Sixties] that those accompanying Kesey on the trip were Neal Cassady, Ken
Babbs, Jane Burton, Page Browning, George Walker, Sandy Lehmann-Haupt, Mike
Hagen, Ron Bevirt, Chuck Kesey, Dale Kesey, John Babbs, Steve Lambrecht and
Paula Sundstren. Hells Angels
Kesey and the Pranksters also had a relationship with the outlaw motorcycle
gang the Hells Angels, whom Kesey introduced to LSD. The details of their
relationship are documented in Wolfe's above-mentioned book, in Hunter S.
Thompson's book, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw
Motorcycle Gangs, and in Allen Ginsberg's poem about the Kesey/Angels
relationship, titled "First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels".
Later events In 1969, Further and the Pranksters
attended the Woodstock rock festival. In the same year, they were also present at
the Texas Pop Festival at Lewisville, Texas.
A collection by Kesey of short pieces, several about the Merry Pranksters,
called Demon Box, was a critical success, although a subsequent novel,
Sailor Song, was not, with critics complaining it was too spacey for
comprehension. In 1994, Kesey toured with the Pranksters, performing a play
he'd written in 1989 about the millennium, influenced by L. Frank
Baum's Wizard of Oz works, called Twister: A Ritual Reality in Three
Quarters Plus Overtime if Necessary. The Merry Pranksters filmed and
audiotaped much of what they did during their bus trips. Some of this material
has surfaced in documentaries, including the BBC's Dancing In the Street. Some of
the Pranksters have released some of the footage on their own, and a version of
the film edited by Kesey himself is available through his son Zane's
website. On August 14, 1997, Kesey appeared with the Merry Pranksters at a
Phish concert during a performance of the song "Colonel Forbin's Ascent" from
the album The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday. Kesey and the Pranksters also
helped stage The Enit Festival held on November 22, 1997, with Jane's
Addiction, Funky Tekno Tribe, Goldie, and Res Fest to round out the bill held
at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. The original Prankster bus is at Kesey's
farm in Oregon. In November 2005, it was pulled out of the swamp by Zane Kesey
and family and a group of the original Merry Pranksters with the intent of
restoring it. The Smithsonian Institution sought to acquire the bus,
which is no longer operable, but Kesey refused. Kesey attempted,
unsuccessfully, to prank the Smithsonian by passing off a phony bus.
Kesey died of complications due to liver cancer in November 2001. Ken Babbs
attempts to keep the Prankster spirit alive through his Skypilot Club website,
which is a spoof of 1950s comic book clubs and which encourages psychedelic
ideals and "mind-expanding" experiences, particularly through immersion in the
emotion of love. On December 10, 2003, Ken Babbs hosted a
memorial to Kesey with String Cheese Incident and various other old and new
Pranksters. It was held at the McDonald Theatre in Eugene Oregon. The proceeds
helped to raise money for the Ken Kesey Memorial sculpture designed by Peter
Helzer. The bronze sculpture depicted a life-size Kesey reading to three
children while seated on a curved granite bench covered with quotes from
Kesey's novels One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes a Great
Notion. Other benefactors for the project include Bob Weir, Paul Newman
and Michael Douglas. In 2005, Kesey's son Zane asked a
friend, Matthew Rick, also known as Shady Backflash, to put on a 40th
anniversary of his father's Acid Tests. Matthew gathered a small group of
promoters, including Rob Robinson from New York, to help him produce the event,
which was held in Las Vegas on October 31, 2005. It was known as AT40. Zane has
hosted several Acid Test parties since then.
2011 documentary Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood directed
a documentary film Magic Trip about the Merry Pranksters, which was released on
August 5, 2011. 50th Anniversary Trip
In April 2014, Zane, along with friend Derek Stevens, announced a Kickstarter
to fund a 50th anniversary Furthur Bus Trip, offering donors a chance to ride
the famous bus. The fundraiser was successful, and the trip took place
between June and September 2014. Over 100 participants were invited to ride on
legs of the trip as a new batch of Merry Pranksters. The 2014 journey was over
15,000 miles, 53 different events, took place in 29 different states and was 75
days of Merry Prankster mayhem and fun on the road. A group of filmmakers from
Canada are producing a documentary about the project slated for release in 2015
under the title "Going Furthur." References
External links Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters website
- with timeline, posters, recordings & Acid Test essay, maintained by
psychedelic researcher Patrick Lundborg Psychedelic 60s: Ken Kesey & the Merry
Pranksters at University of Virginia library