TheMerry Pranksters were followers of American authorKen Kesey. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters livedcommunally at Kesey's homes inCalifornia andOregon, and are noted for thesociological significance of a lengthyroad trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in apsychedelic painted school bus calledFurthur, organizing parties, and giving outLSD.[1] During this time they met many of the guiding lights of the 1960scultural movement and presaged what are commonly thought of ashippies with odd behavior, tie-dyed and red, white, and blue clothing, and renunciation of normal society, which they dubbedThe Establishment.Tom Wolfe chronicled their early escapades in his 1968 bookThe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, including a bit on the same epic 1964 cross-country trip onFurthur - a sojourn to the1964 World's Fair inNew York City, stopping to visit Kesey's friend, novelistLarry McMurtry inHouston on the way.[2]
Notable members of the group include Kesey's best friendKen Babbs,Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia,Lee Quarnstrom, andNeal Cassady.Stewart Brand,Dorothy Fadiman,[3]Paul Foster, George Walker,the Warlocks (later known as theGrateful Dead),Del Close (then a lighting designer for the Grateful Dead),Wavy Gravy,Paul Krassner, and Kentucky Fab Five writersEd McClanahan andGurney Norman (who overlapped with Kesey and Babbs as creative writing graduate students atStanford University) were associated with the group to varying degrees.[citation needed]
These events are also documented by one of the original pranksters, Lee Quarnstrom, in his memoir,When I Was a Dynamiter.
In an interview onBBC World Service in August 2014,[4]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!"
Although a great many friends and associates spent time with Kesey at hisLa Honda, California ranch in theSanta Cruz Mountains south ofSan Francisco, the core group of 14 people who became the 'Merry Band of Pranksters' that drove across the country in 1964 were:[5][6]
Other on-again, off-again Pranksters (all of whom did not participate in the first cross-country journey, but may have the later trips) include, but are not limited to, the following:[13][14]
On June 17, 1964, Kesey and 13 Merry Pranksters boardedFurthur at Kesey's ranch inLa Honda, California, and set off eastward. Kesey wanted to see what would happen whenhallucinogenic-inspired spontaneity confronted what he saw as the banality andconformity of American society. Ken Babbs has suggested that the bus trip reversed the historic American westward movement.[29]
The trip's original purpose was to celebrate the publication of Kesey's novelSometimes a Great Notion (1964) and to visit the1964 World's Fair in New York City. The Pranksters were enthusiastic users ofmarijuana,amphetamines, andLSD, and in the process of their journey are said to have "turned on" many people by introducing them to these drugs.[30]
The psychedelically painted bus's stated destination — "furthur" — was the Merry Pranksters' goal: a destination that could be reached only through the expansion of one's own perception of reality.[30]
NovelistRobert Stone, who met the bus on its arrival in New York, wrote in his memoirPrime Green: Remembering the Sixties (2007) that those accompanying Kesey on the trip wereNeal Cassady (described by Stone as "the world's greatest driver, who could roll a joint while backing a 1937Packard onto the lip of theGrand Canyon"), Ken Babbs ("fresh from theNam, full of radio nomenclature, and with a command voice that put cops to flight"), Jane Burton ("a pregnant young philosophy professor who declined no challenges"), George Walker, Sandy Lehmann-Haupt (dis-MOUNT), Mike Hagen (Mal Function), Ron Bevirt (Hassler), Chuck Kesey, Dale Kesey, John Babbs, Steve Lambrecht and Paula Sundstren (aka Gretchin Fetchin, Slime Queen).[31]
Zane Kesey and Simon Babbs edited the video and audio clips made by the Pranksters on the trip to produce a DVD (1999) called simplyThe Acid Test, which is distributed by Key-z Productions.
Kesey and the Pranksters also had a relationship with theoutlaw motorcycle gang theHells Angels, whom Kesey introduced to LSD. The details of their relationship are documented in Wolfe's above-mentioned book, inHunter S. Thompson's book,Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966), and inAllen Ginsberg's poem about the Kesey/Angels relationship, titled "First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels" (December 1965).[32]
In 1969,Furthur and the Pranksters (minus Kesey) attended theWoodstock rock festival. In the same year, they attended theTexas Pop Festival atLewisville, Texas.[33]
Kesey'sDemon Box (1986), a collection of short pieces, several about the Merry Pranksters, was a critical success.[34] A subsequent novel,Sailor Song (1992),[35] was not, with critics complaining it was too spacey for comprehension.[citation needed] In 1994, Kesey toured with the Pranksters, performingTwister: A Ritual Reality in Three Quarters Plus Overtime if Necessary, a play he wrote in 1989 about the millennium, influenced byL. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz works.
The Merry Pranksters filmed and audiotaped much of what they did on their bus trips. Some of this material has surfaced in documentaries, including the BBC's Dancing In the Street.[36] Some Pranksters have released footage on their own, and a version of the film edited by Kesey is available through his son Zane's website.[37] On August 14, 1997, Kesey appeared with the Merry Pranksters at aPhish concert during a performance of the song "Colonel Forbin's Ascent" from the albumThe Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday (1987).Kesey and the Pranksters also helped stageThe Enit Festival, held at theBill Graham Civic Auditorium on November 22, 1997, withJane's Addiction, Funky Tekno Tribe,Goldie, andRes Fest rounding out the bill.
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.[38][39] TheSmithsonian Institution sought to acquire the bus, which is no longer operable, but Kesey refused, and attempted, unsuccessfully, to prank the Smithsonian by passing off a phony bus.[40]
Kesey died of complications due toliver cancer in November 2001.
On December 10, 2003,Ken Babbs hosted a memorial to Kesey withString Cheese Incident and various other old and new Pranksters. It was held at theMcDonald Theatre inEugene, Oregon. The proceeds helped to raise money for theKen 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 quotations from Kesey's novelsOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) andSometimes a Great Notion (1964). (Pulitzer Prize-winning photographerBrian Lanker supplied the image.) Other benefactors for the project includeBob Weir,Paul Newman (who starred in the 1971 film adaptation ofSometimes a Great Notion) andMichael Douglas (who produced the 1975 film version ofOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest).
Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood directed adocumentary filmMagic Trip (2011) about the Merry Pranksters, which was released on August 5, 2011.[41][42]
In April 2014, Ken's son Zane Kesey, along with friend Derek Stevens, announced aKickstarter to fund a 50th anniversary bus trip offering donors a chance to rideFurthur. The fundraiser was successful, and the trip took place between June and September 2014.[43] Over 100 participants were invited to ride on legs of the trip after making donations. The 2014 journey covered over 15,000 miles, held 53 different events in 29 different states, and spent 75 days on the road. A group of filmmakers documented the journey, releasing a film titledGoing Furthur.[44]
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