Merry Pranksters
The Merry Pranksters were followers of American author Ken Kesey. 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, organizing parties, and giving out LSD. During this time they met many of the guiding lights of the 1960s cultural movement and presaged what are commonly thought of as hippies with odd behavior, tie-dyed and red, white, and blue clothing, and renunciation of normal society, which they dubbed The Establishment. Tom Wolfe chronicled their early escapades in his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, including a bit on the same epic 1964 cross-country trip on Furthur - a sojourn to the 1964 World's Fair in New York City, stopping to visit Kesey's friend, novelist Larry McMurtry in Houston on the way.
Notable members of the group include Kesey's best friend Ken Babbs, Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia, Lee Quarnstrom, and Neal Cassady. Stewart Brand, Dorothy Fadiman, Paul Foster, George Walker, 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 2014 memoir, 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:Membership
On the bus
Although a great many friends and associates spent time with Kesey at his La Honda, California ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco, the core group of 14 people who became the 'Merry Band of Pranksters' that drove across the country in 1964 were:- Ken Kesey, author
- Neal Cassady, driver, author
- Cathy Casamo, actress, girlfriend of Larry Hankin
- Ron Bevirt, photographer
- Ken Babbs, author, boyfriend of Paula Sundsten
- John Babbs, Ken Babbs' older brother
- Jane Burton, Stanford philosophy professor, pregnant at the time
- Sandy Lehmann-Haupt, sound engineer, younger brother of Carl Lehmann-Haupt
- Paula Sundsten, girlfriend of Ken Babbs
- Mike Hagen, cameraman
- George Walker
- Steve Lambrecht, businessman
- Chuck Kesey, Ken's brother
- Dale Kesey, Ken's cousin, "bus chaplain"
- Linda Breen, a 14 year old runaway who hopped on in Canada during the original trip
Off the bus
Other on-again, off-again Pranksters include, but are not limited to, the following:- 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
- Paul Foster, cartoonist
- Peter Demma, co-owner of Hip Pocket Bookstore with Kesey
- Norman Hartweg, columnist
- Dorothy Fadiman, filmmaker
- Kathy
- June
- Stephanie Kesey
- Zane Kesey
- Allan Terk Oakland Hells Angel, Acid Test graduation poster artist, designed first Grateful Dead shirt
- John Terrence Tracy - Oakland Hells Angel, Actor, La Honda alumni
- Simon Babbs
- Margie Piaggio
- Laurence Shurtliff Lead Roadie for Grateful Dead
- Matt Wade - Oakland Hells Angels 'Dago Joe's' son, Author and Bus Mechanic
- Euphoria Foster Paul's Daughter, artist
- Stewart Brand, author and futurist
- Laya Cassady Singer, Artist, daughter of The Fillmore light tech 'Teddy Bruce'
- Del Close, comedian and performance coach
- Wavy Gravy, entertainer and activist
- Paul Krassner, author
- Lee Quarnstrom, author
- Ed McClanahan, author
- Gurney Norman, author
- Robert Stone, author; met the bus in New York City
- Emilia Hazelip, organic gardener
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. Ken Babbs has suggested that the bus trip reversed the historic American westward movement.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 are said to have "turned on" many people by introducing them to these drugs.
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.
Novelist Robert Stone, who met the bus on its arrival in New York, wrote in his memoir Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties that those accompanying Kesey on the trip were Neal Cassady, Ken Babbs, Jane Burton, George Walker, Sandy Lehmann-Haupt, Mike Hagen, Ron Bevirt, Chuck Kesey, Dale Kesey, John Babbs, Steve Lambrecht and Paula Sundstren.
Zane Kesey and Simon Babbs edited the video and audio clips made by the Pranksters on the trip to produce a DVD called simply The Acid Test, which is distributed by Key-z Productions.
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, Furthur and the Pranksters attended the Woodstock rock festival. In the same year, they attended the Texas Pop Festival at Lewisville, Texas.Kesey's Demon Box, a collection of short pieces, several about the Merry Pranksters, was a critical success. A subsequent novel, Sailor Song, was not, with critics complaining it was too spacey for comprehension. In 1994, Kesey toured with the Pranksters, performing Twister: A Ritual Reality in Three Quarters Plus Overtime if Necessary, a play he wrote in 1989 about the millennium, influenced by L. 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. 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. 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 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium on November 22, 1997, with Jane's Addiction, Funky Tekno Tribe, Goldie, and Res 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. The Smithsonian 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.
Kesey died of complications due to liver cancer in November 2001.
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 quotations 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.