The Merry Pranksters were a group of people who formed around American author Ken Kesey in 1964 and sometimes lived communally at his homes in California and Oregon. The group promoted the use of psychedelic drugs.

Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters 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 enigmatically and variably labeled "Further" or "Furthur". Their early escapades were chronicled by Tom Wolfe 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 on the lam from a drug charge at the time.

Notable members of the group include Kesey's best friend Ken Babbs and Neal Cassady, Carolyn Garcia (also known as Mountain Girl), Wavy Gravy, the Grateful Dead, Paul Krassner, Stewart Brand, Del Close, Paul Foster, Kentucky Fab Five authors Ed McClanahan (also known as "Captain Kentucky"), Gurney Norman, George Walker, Mike Hagen, Sandy Lehmann-Haupt, and John Page Browning (also known as "Rampage" or the "Cadaverous Cowboy").

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. One author has suggested that the bus trip reversed the historic American westward movement of the centuries.^[1]

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 psychedelically painted bus had its stated destination as being "further." This was the goal of the Merry Pranksters, a destination that could only be obtained through the expansion of one's own perceptions of reality. They traveled cross-country giving LSD to anyone who was willing to try it (LSD was legal in the United States until October 1966).

Novelist Robert Stone, who met the bus on its arrival in New York, has written that those accompanying Kesey on the trip were 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 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").^[2]

Kesey and the Pranksters also had a relationship with the infamous outlaw motorcycle gang the Hells Angels, who were introduced to LSD by Kesey. The details of their relationship are documented both in Wolfe's book and in Hunter S. Thompson's book, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. Poet Allen Ginsberg also wrote a poem about the Kesey/Angels relationship.

In 1969, Further and the Pranksters (minus Kesey) made it to the Woodstock rock festival. The same year, they were also present at the Texas Pop Festival at Lewisville, Texas.^[3]

A collection by Kesey of short pieces, several about the Merry Pranksters, called Demon Box and released in 1986, was a critical success, although a subsequent novel, Sailor Song, was not, with critics complaining it was too spacey for comprehension. 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. In 1994 Kesey toured with the Pranksters, performing a play he wrote about the millennium called Twister.

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.

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.

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 1950's comic book clubs and which encourages psychedelic ideals and 'mind-expanding' experiences, particularly through immersion in the emotion of love.

In 2005, Kesey's son Zane Kesey asked a friend, Matthew Rick, also known as Shady Backflash, to put on a 40th anniversary of his father's Acid Tests. Matthew got together a small group of promoters, including Rob Robinson from New York, to help him produce the event, which was held on October 31, 2005, in Las Vegas. It was known as AT40. Rick and Kesey along with Ken Babbs's son Simon, Jon Sebree, Dead On Randy, TK Bi-Polar Bear, Torrey, Mushroom, Lance and Nathan rode to Las Vegas on Further. Original Prankster George Walker was also on hand.^[4]

Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood directed a new documentary film Magic Trip (2011) about the Merry Pranksters, released 5 August 2011.

• Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters website - with timeline, posters, recordings & Acid Test essay
• Psychedelic 60s: Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters at University of Virginia library

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