Merry Pranksters

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The Merry Pranksters are a group of people who originally formed around American novelist Ken Kesey and sometimes lived communally at his homes in California and Oregon. Notable members include Kesey's best friend Ken Babbs and Mountain Girl (born Carolyn Adams but best known as Mrs. Jerry Garcia), Wavy Gravy, Paul Krassner, Stewart Brand, Paul Foster and others. Their early escapades were best chronicled by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Ken Kesey once described Wolfe's book as, "99.9% accurate" although he also complained that the celebrity status the book conveyed upon him was in some ways a burden.

Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters are remembered chiefly for the sociological significance of a lengthy roadtrip they took in 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelically painted school bus enigmatically labeled "Furthur." 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 and LSD, and in the process of their journey they are said to have "turned on" many people by introducing them to these drugs. During this voyage they unsuccessfully attempted to meet Dr. Timothy Leary at his Millbrook estate in New York, where they had hoped to hold a summit meeting between the two major leaders of the psychedelic movement.

There was disagreement between Kesey and the Pranksters and Leary and his followers over the direction of the psychedelic movement. Dr. Leary believed that psychedelic drugs should be approached in a serious, scientific manner for psychological and spiritual enlightenment. The Leary camp opposed giving people psychedelics outside of a controlled setting and especially denounced giving the drugs to people without their knowledge. Kesey however believed that psychedelics were best used as a tool for transforming society as a whole, and believed that if a sufficient percentage of the population had the psychedelic experience then revolutionary social and political changes would occur. Therefore giving people LSD at the Acid Tests hidden in soft drinks was justified as an agent for social change. In other words, Kesey saw psychedelics in revolutionary terms, while Leary's approach was more intellectual.

It was hoped that a summit between Kesey and Leary would resolve this disagreement in a way that would draw on the strengths of both approaches. However when Kesey and the Pranksters arrived at Millbrook they discovered that Leary had just crashed from a three day acid binge and could not be revived sufficiently to greet his guests. Plans for a subsequent summit became impossible when both Kesey and Leary were imprisoned on drug charges. Ken Babbs and Wavy Gravy assumed the leadership of the Pranksters while Kesey was incarcerated. Wavy Gravy would eventually leave the Pranksters to establish his own group, The Hog Farm.

Novelist Robert Stone, who met the bus on its arrival in New York, has written that Neal Cassady (described by Stone as “the world’s greatest driver, who could roll a joint while backing a 1937 Packard onto the lip of the Grand Canyon”), Ken Babbs (“fresh from the Nam, 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"), Page Browning (“a Hell’s Angel candidate”), George Walker, Sandy Lehman-Haupt, Mike Hagen, Ron Bevirt (“Hassler”), Chuck Kesey, Dale Kesey, John Babbs, Steve Lambrecht and Paula Sundstren (“aka Gretchin Fetchin, Swamp Queen”), accompanied Kesey on the trip.^[1]

Kesey and the Pranksters also had an important relationship with the famous outlaw motorcycle gang the Hell's Angels, who were introduced to LSD by Kesey. The details of their relationship are documented both in Wolfe's book and in famous counterculture figure Hunter S. Thompson's book Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs

Following the bus trip, the Pranksters held a series of "Acid Tests", where participants were given "acid", the street name for LSD. The tests were held at various venues, and were sometimes advertised with crayoned signs asking "Can you pass the acid test?" The first Acid Test was held in Palo Alto, California in November 1965. (LSD was legal in the United States until October 6, 1966.) The young psychedelic music band The Grateful Dead (known earlier as The Warlocks) supplied the music during these events; in essence, they were the house band for the mobile party.

In 1969, Furthur and the Pranksters (minus Kesey) made it to the Woodstock rock festival. The original Prankster bus now rests at Kesey's farm in Oregon. The Smithsonian Institution sought to acquire the bus, which is no longer operable, but Kesey refused. True to form, Kesey attempted, unsuccessfully, to prank the venerable Smithsonian by passing off a phony bus. In 1999 Kesey toured with the Pranksters performing a play he wrote about the millennium called "Twister."

There are no membership requirements to be a Merry Prankster. As Kesey put it when asked how you become a Merry Prankster, "I don't pick 'em, I recognize them." People who consider themselves Pranksters in spirit are said to be "on the bus" whether or not they ever actually took a bus trip with Kesey. In other words, the bus has become a metaphor for the lifestyle of anyone who is in solidarity with the psychedelic movement and who encourages others to have mind expanding experiences, with or without drugs. While everyone is invited to consider themselves a member of the Merry Pranksters, Kesey was strict about what should constitute a proper prank. He said a successful prank must not physically hurt anyone, and the person being pranked must in some way be enlightened by the experience.

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 (1996). 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.

In 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. He died of liver complications in November 2001.

In 2005, Zane Kesey, Ken's son asked a friend Matthew Rick, to put on a 40th Anniversary of his father's Acid Tests. Matthew got together a small group of promoters, including Rob Robinson, from NY to help him produce what Zane had asked of them. The event was held on Oct 31, 2005 in Las Vegas. It was known as AT40. Zane Kesey and Simon Babbs (Ken Babbs's son) both rode to Vegas on FURTHUR 2. George Walker (original Prankster) was also on hand.