There was the Beat Generation, then the Pranksters, then the Hippies.Neal Cassady was the living link between the Beats and the Pranksters. And then the phone calls got irregular and then one morning around 10am, I got a call from a male voice that said he was one of the Merry Pranksters calling from Houston, Texas and that they were all sleeping on the floor in Larry McMurtry’s house. Now, on the 50th anniversary of the journey, Zane Kesey has launched a campaign on the crowd-funding site Kickstarter, looking for a few good modern-day Pranksters to … The 1947 Furthur bus was refurbished and toured the country as part of a "Furthur 50th Anniversary Trip" in the summer of 2014. The license plates read "MAZ 804". The Bus to Never Ever Land: Musical Tales from the Original Merry Pranksters, a Hog Farmer, and the Grateful Dead's Side Projects [Feinberg, Jake, Lasocki, David] on Amazon.com. Robert Stone met them briefly in New York City. Kesey was in flight from a drug charge at the time. On June 17, 1964, Kesey and 13 Merry Pranksters boarded "Further" 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. [43], Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, Twister: A Ritual Reality in Three Quarters Plus Overtime if Necessary, "Ken Kesey's Magic Trip and Extreme Tango", "MAGIC TRIP - Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place / Blu-Ray Review", "Pamplin Media Group - Pamplin Media Group", "Merry Prankster George Walker December 4th 2015 Felton, California", "Furthur and Furthur | Oregon Life | Eugene, Oregon", "Mountain Girl And The Magic Trip : A Conversation With Carolyn Garcia", "Fate of Merry Prankster tree in limbo as neighbors rally | News | Almanac Online |", "Chloe Keighly-Peach Scott: May 16, 1925 ~ September 9, 2019 (Age 94)", "John Page Browning (1938 - 1984) - Find A Grave Memorial", "tHrouGh The Looking Glass - The Merry Pranksters", "Editorial & News Images: News Photography, Pictures, Awards, Events, Sports, Celebrity Photos | Getty Images", "Bohemian 24, Why Norman's Still on the Bus", "Zero, Northwest Florida: 11/11/2007 - 11/18/2007", "Ken Kesey's original magic bus being restored", "Kesey's bus on magic road to resurrection (Associated Press)", "Kesey's Merry Prank: Bus Isn't The Original -- Smithsonian Says It Doesn't Want '47 Model | Seattle Times Newspaper", Psychedelic 60s: Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters, National Festival of Polish Song in Opole, Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival, Northern California Folk-Rock Festival II, Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Merry_Pranksters&oldid=1004721743, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2014, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 4 February 2021, at 01:13. Facebook is showing information to help you better understand the purpose of a Page. On the Bus: The Complete Guide to the Legendary Trip of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and the Birth of by Paul Perry | Jan 21, 1993 4.0 out of 5 stars 10 Road Warriors: Timothy Leary (left) and Neal Cassady, the inspiration for Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's On the Road, were two of the Merry Pranksters onboard the psychedelic "Further" bus in … The bus also figures obliquely as a "technicolor motor home" in the Steely Dan song "Kid Charlemagne" (1976), which is actually about another LSD proponent, Owsley Stanley. George Walker recalls, "We left La Honda on June 14, 1964, about 3 PM First stop, on Kesey's bridge, out of gas! They took the general name "Merry Band of Pranksters" shortened to Merry Pranksters, but many people who considered themselves Pranksters chose not to go, and others became Pranksters only because they chose to go. 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 (1962) and Sometimes a Great Notion (1964). In 1964, Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and thirteen “Merry Pranksters” painted a bus in frenzied Day-Glo, named it “Furthur” and took off on an LSD-fueled road trip.. Now ten years after Kesey’s death, filmmakers Alison Ellwood and Alex Gibney have captured the four-decades-ago excursion in a new movie, Magic Trip, opening in theaters August 12. The producers who had invited him apparently had no knowledge of his history or politics, and once he started making drug references they removed him from the stage. The list of participants is not well documented. It was eventually parked in the swamp on Kesey's Farm, where it deteriorated over the years. [1] The legendary Neal Cassady showed up at the last minute and displaced Roy Sebern as driver, as far as New York. Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Adams Garcia (not present) has also been confused with Cathy Casamo. [38] 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 (1987). The Grateful Dead and the Merry Pranksters once did this cross-country bus ride, putting on shows as we traveled, called "Medicine Ball Caravan." The bus called Further was moved to Kesey's home state of Oregon for safekeeping. Due to the chaos of the trip and editing difficulties, the footage of their journey was not released as a movie until the 2011 documentary film Magic Trip—although the bus featured prominently in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Merry Prankster and author Lee Quarnstrom documents events on the bus in his memoir, When I Was a Dynamiter! The Merry Pranksters as they were now known, set of across the USA filming and recording everything that happened along the way, freaking people out and turning people on. (He only met Kesey the following year.) Grateful Dead Inspired Sticker- On the Bus- Merry pranksters- laptop sticker, car sticker, window sticker DyetheSkyArt. Kesey had a generous supply of the then-legal psychedelic drug LSD, and they reportedly also took 500 Benzedrine pills (speed), and a shoebox full of pre-rolled marijuana joints.[3]. 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 (1966), and in Allen Ginsberg's poem about the Kesey/Angels relationship, titled "First Party at Ken Kesey's with Hell's Angels" (December 1965). THE PUBLICATION OF Kesey's second novel Sometimes a Great Notion demanded his presence in New York, so Kesey bought a 1939 International Harvester school bus that he and the Merry Pranksters painted in day-glo colors, and outfitted it for a cross-country trip. The Merry Pranksters filmed and audiotaped much of what they did on their bus trips. In 1964, author Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters set off on a road trip in a modified school bus they dubbed 'Furthur' -- and laid the foundation for the counterculture, the Summer of Love, and the Woodstock phenomenon. Ken Babbs has suggested that the bus trip reversed the historic American westward movement. In 1964 drug use hadn't yet gotten enough media attention for the authorities to be suspicious. The bus was named by artist Roy Sebern, who first painted the word "Furthur" (with two U's, quickly corrected) on the destination placard as a kind of one-word poem and inspiration to keep going whenever the bus broke down. 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! They arrived back in La Honda in August. [4] They previewed their progress at regular, open parties every weekend at Kesey's place, which evolved into the 'Acid Tests' with live music from the Grateful Dead (known first as the Warlocks). From shop DyetheSkyArt. Ken Babbs may not have planned to venture past the stop at his San Juan Capistrano home. Kesey wanted to see what would happen when hallucinogenic-inspired spontaneity confronted what he saw as the banality and conformity of American society. Kesey and the Pranksters also had a relationship with the outlaw motorcycle gang the Hells Angels, whom Kesey introduced to LSD. Another platform was welded to the rear to hold the generator and a motorcycle. These events are also documented by one of the original pranksters, Lee Quarnstrom, in his memoir, When I Was a Dynamiter. The Pranksters added many more customizations, including a generator, a sound system (with an interior and external intercom), a railing and seating platform on top of the bus, and an observation turret coming out the top made from a washing machine drum fitted into a hole cut in the roof. Sports Team. Once its historic trips had come to an end the bus was gutted and used around the Keseys' farm in Oregon until at least 1983, when it was mentioned and pictured in an article in the May–June Saturday Review. In New York they picked up novelist Robert Stone (who recounted his viewpoint in his 2007 book Prime Green). Chloe Scott bailed out in San Jose, but Cathy Casamo joined them there. Oregon Merry Pranksters. Hobson had already added bunks, a bathroom, and a kitchen with refrigerator and stove for taking his 11 kids on vacation. Their route home, without Cassady to drive, took them through Canada. Other Furthur trips included an anti-Vietnam war rally in 1966 and Woodstock and Texas International Pop Festivals, both in 1969 (without Kesey). In Phoenix they confounded the Barry Goldwater presidential headquarters by painting "A VOTE FOR BARRY IS A VOTE FOR FUN!" [30], The trip's original purpose was to celebrate the publication of Kesey's novel Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) and to visit the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. [31], The psychedelically painted bus's stated destination — "further" — was the Merry Pranksters' goal: a destination that could be reached only through the expansion of one's own perception of reality. In the Grateful Dead song "The Other One" Bob Weir sings the lyric "the bus came by and I got on, that's when it all began, there was cowboy Neal at the wheel of the bus to never never land", an apparent reference to the original Furthur. Due to the chaos of the trip and editing difficulties, the footage of their journey was not released as a movie until the 2011 documentary film Magic Trip—although the bus featured prominently in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. By 1964 he had gathered a collection of eccentric friends, dubbed the Merry Pranksters, who experimented with psychedelic drugs and multi-media art projects. True Facts About The Smithsonian Caper. Tom Wolfe used the film and tapes as the basis of his book, but Kesey's edit was never officially finished or released, in part because Kesey was arrested in 1965 for marijuana possession (LSD would not become illegal until 1966). A group of filmmakers from Canada are producing a – still unreleased – documentary about the project originally slated for release in 2016 under the title Going Furthur. Their next destination was Pensacola, Florida to visit a friend of Babbs', then up the east coast to New York City, arriving around June 29. Apple Drops LSD Pioneer Into Party, Has Bummer, Ken Kesey’s original magic bus being restored, "Kesey's bus on magic road to resurrection (Associated Press)", List of International Harvester/Navistar engines, International Harvester Company Warehouse, International Harvester strike of 1979–80, McCormick-International Harvester Company Branch House, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Furthur_(bus)&oldid=999993823, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles needing additional references from December 2020, All articles needing additional references, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 13 January 2021, at 00:24. Cathy Casamo was a friend of Mike Hagen's who joined at the last minute, hoping to star in the movie they were supposedly making, but she was left behind in Houston. As more Pranksters volunteered for the trip they soon realized they had outgrown Kesey's station wagon, so Kesey bought a retired yellow school bus for $1,250 from Andre Hobson of Atherton, California. The proceeds helped to raise money for the Ken Kesey Memorial sculpture designed by Peter Helzer. The original Prankster bus is at Kesey's farm in Oregon. Ken Kesey's quote "You're either on the bus or off the bus," as quoted by Tom Wolfe, is often repeated as a counter-culture slogan. He also managed to see the 1964 New York World's Fair site under construction. Their haircuts were conservative too—long hair was only starting to come into fashion with the Beatles. Kesey's Demon Box (1986), a collection of short pieces, several about the Merry Pranksters, was a critical success. Alexander is what you would call a second generation psychedelic American and creative renaissance man. They were stopped several times by police and highway patrol, but explained they were filmmakers. Tom Wolfe's book gives the misleading impression that he was a participant. Two years later, he and his friends, known as the Merry Pranksters, loaded a bus full of acid and travelled across America, founding psychedelia along the way and spawning a … (One version claims he only joined at that point.). [9][10][11], In 1993, Kesey drove the second bus to California to speak at a private party hosted by Apple Computer. Kesey's wife Faye is sometimes mistakenly included, and Furthur-painter Roy Sebern. [13][14][15] Most media accounts at the time did not distinguish between the original Furthur bus and the restored 1990 bus. 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. Stewart Brand, Dorothy Fadiman,[3] Paul Foster, Dale Kesey (his cousin), George Walker, the Warlocks (now known as the Grateful Dead), Del Close (then a lighting designer for the Grateful Dead), Wavy Gravy, Paul Krassner, and Kentucky Fab Five writers Ed McClanahan and Gurney Norman (who overlapped with Kesey and Babbs as creative writing graduate students at Stanford University) were associated with the group to varying degrees. [42] Over 100 participants were invited to ride on legs of the trip as a new batch of Merry Pranksters. Director Alex Gibney finally publicly released a major new edit in 2011 as the documentary Magic Trip. Tom Wolfe chronicled their early escapades in his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and documents a notorious 1966 trip on Furthur from Mexico through Houston, stopping to visit Kesey's friend, novelist Larry McMurtry. This 1934 International Harvester school bus, named "Further" became an international icon of the hippy movement after the Merry Pranksters drove it from California … 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 Furthur. Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images The "Great Smithsonian Prank" was a prank perpetrated on the media. The original bus's last journey was a trip to the Woodstock Festival in 1969. From shop … This plan gradually grew into an ambitious scheme to bring along a group of friends and turn their adventures into a road movie, taking inspiration from Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road. It is not called Furthur 2, and is not meant as a replica, although confusion between the two buses is intentional. Jane Burton, George Walker, Steve Lambrecht, Paula Sundsten, Sandy Lehmann-Haupt (sound engineer, younger brother of Christopher, and important source for Tom Wolfe's account [2]), Page Browning, Ron Bevirt (photographer and bookstore owner), and siblings Chuck Kesey, Dale Kesey, and John Babbs are also named as participants. The Merry Pranksters . ", Their route took them first to San Jose, California and then Los Angeles. Many lived together communally in a house La Honda, CA, and several traveled … The second bus is labeled "Further" on the front and "Furthur" on the back. One author has suggested that the bus trip reversed the historic American westward movement of the centuries. Ginsberg arranged a visit with LSD enthusiasts Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert in Millbrook, New York, but the West Coast style of partying was too wild for the Millbrook academics. [2], Notable members of the group include Kesey's best friend Ken Babbs, Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia, Lee Quarnstrom, and Neal Cassady. They brought a Confederate flag too. Furthur is a 1939 International Harvester school bus purchased by author Ken Kesey in 1964 to carry his "Merry Band of Pranksters" cross-country, filming their counterculture adventures as they went. The Merry Pranksters were a group of friends and family associated with Ken Kesey. [39][40] 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.[41]. Gradually as the Pranksters personalities unfolded in the melting pot that was The Bus they were all given new names: Furthur: The Bus Then & Now In the 60s In 1964, Ken Kesey and his group of “Merry Pranksters,” fueled by LSD and a free-wheeling spirit of adventure, painted a … Kesey and Babbs took on the frustrating challenge of editing over 100 hours of silent film footage and separate (unsynchronized) audio tapes. Kesey wanted to see what would happen when hallucinogenic-inspired spontaneity confronted what he saw as the banality and conformity of American society. 5 out of 5 ... ON SALE NOW Hand Made Polish Folklore Merry Prankster Lajkonik Figurine TheVintageVaultLLC. Cathy would call regularly in the evening and speak to Katy and me. Who goes there?" That year, Kesey and the Pranksters traveled across America, from the West Coast to New York City, on a garishly painted converted school bus they named "Further." The bus appears as inspiration for the cover and in the Amazon short story "Existential Trips" by William Bevill. In New Orleans, Cassady showed them the nightlife, and then the Pranksters accidentally went swimming in a 'blacks only' area on Lake Ponchartrain. Cathy’s Disappearance . They left on June 17, 1964, but because of various vehicle problems it took them 24 hours to go the first 40 miles (64 km). Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood directed a documentary film Magic Trip (2011) about the Merry Pranksters, which was released on August 5, 2011. They spent two days at Ken Babbs' home in San Juan Capistrano, painting his swimming pool. The cross-country trip of Furthur and the activities of the Merry Pranksters, with the success of Wolfe's book and other media accounts, led to a number of psychedelic buses appearing in popular media over the next few years, including in the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour (1967 film), the Partridge Family TV show (1970), Paul McCartney’s 1972 Wings Tour Bus, The Muppet Movie (1979 film), and later, The Magic School Bus books and TV series. In the 2007 film, Across the Universe, a fictionalized version of the bus appears, this one a Chevrolet bearing the name "Beyond" in place of "Furthur". Both Kesey and original Prankster Ken Babbs released books in 1990 recounting their famous adventure (Kesey's was called The Further Inquiry (ISBN 0670831743) and Babbs' was On the Bus (ISBN 0938410911)). They then wouldn't let him get the bus out of the parking lot, forcing him to hang around the event until it ended.[12]. The misspelled name is still often used, as in Wolfe's book. Some of this material has surfaced in documentaries, including the BBC's Dancing In the Street. Led by literary college buddies Ken Kesey and his best friend and co-pilot, Ken Babbs, the Merry Pranksters were a core group of 14 people who helped give birth to the psychedelic counterculture in the mid-1960’s.. [33], In 1969, Further and the Pranksters (minus Kesey) attended the Woodstock rock festival. Zane Kesey and Simon Babbs edited the video and audio clips made by the Pranksters on the trip to produce a DVD (1999) called simply The Acid Test, which is distributed by Key-z Productions. In 1964 Ken Kesey, author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and his band of Merry Pranksters drove their psychedlic hippie bus straight through that … On December 10, 2003, Ken Babbs hosted a memorial to Kesey with String Cheese Incident and various other old and new Pranksters. There was a conscious decision that everyone dress in red, white and blue stripes (so they could claim to be loyal patriots), maybe with distinctive patterns so they'd be easier for future film-goers to tell apart. But four years after his death, a Hollywood restaurateur has persuaded the family to resurrect the old bus so it can help tell the story of Kesey, the Merry … Made it about 100 feet. Outside Wikieup, Arizona they got stuck in the sand by a pond, and had an intense LSD party while they waited for a tractor to pull them out. (Kesey's Further Inquiry wrestles with his enduring guilt about these events.). In the same year, they attended the Texas Pop Festival at Lewisville, Texas.[34]. In an interview on BBC 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! [37] 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. More can be read about the adventures of the Merry Pranksters on Furthur in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, for which a movie directed by Gus Van Sant is in development. Sandy Lehmann-Haupt, one of the Merry Pranksters on the novelist Ken Kesey's boisterously psychedelic bus, which helped define the hippie way … 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:[5][6], Other on-again, off-again Pranksters—who did not participate in the first cross-country journey (but may have the later trips) -- include but are not limited to:[13][14], On June 17, 1964, Kesey and 13 Merry Pranksters boarded Furthur at Kesey's ranch in La Honda, California, and set off eastward.
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