Merry Pranksters

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The Merry Pranksters were a group of people who formed around American novelist Ken Kesey and lived communally at his home in La Honda, California. Notable members include Kesey's main cohort Ken Babbs and Mountain Girl (born Carolyn Adams), among others. Their escapades were chronicled by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

They are remembered chiefly for travelling across the United States in a psychedelically painted school bus enigmatically labelled "Furthur." The trip's original purpose was to visit the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. The Pranksters were heavy 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 met Timothy Leary at his Millbrook estate.

The Pranksters were known for holding "Acid Tests", where participants were given 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.

The Pranksters' travels continued until 1969, when Furthur (minus Kesey) made it to the Woodstock rock festival. The original Prankster bus was returned to Kesey's rural home 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.

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.

In 1997, Kesey reunited 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 in 2001.