Merry Pranksters
The Merry Pranksters were a group of friends led by American writer Ken Kesey. They lived together in California and Oregon in the 1960s and became famous for a wild cross‑country trip in 1964 on a psychedelic-painted bus named Furthur. They threw parties, handed out LSD, and challenged ordinary life in America.
Their trip helped spark the 1960s counterculture. They wore bright clothes, explored free, unconventional living, and rejected the idea of “The Establishment.” The story of their journey was told by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). The 1964 road trip included a stop at the New York World’s Fair and a visit to Kesey’s friend Larry McMurtry in Houston.
Key members included Kesey, his close friend Ken Babbs, Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia, Lee Quarnstrom, and Neal Cassady. Others connected to the group over time included Stewart Brand, Dorothy Fadiman, Paul Foster, George Walker, the Grateful Dead (then called the Warlocks), Del Close, Wavy Gravy, Paul Krassner, and writers Ed McClanahan and Gurney Norman. These people appeared in various combinations as the Pranksters’ circle evolved. One of the group’s memories is told in Lee Quarnstrom’s 2014 memoir, When I Was a Dynamiter.
Much later, Babbs said he suggested the name “The Merry Pranksters.” The idea was playful: a group of travelers crossing the nation to expand minds, not to destroy anything—“the obliteration of the entire nation” was a joke about blowing people’s minds, not harming them.
The core crew that drove across the country in Furthur on June 17, 1964, started from Kesey’s La Honda, California home. Kesey wanted to test what would happen when hallucinogenic spontaneity met mainstream American life. The trip also aimed to celebrate Kesey’s novel Sometimes a Great Notion and to visit the World’s Fair in New York.
The Pranksters liked marijuana, amphetamines, and LSD, and they are said to have introduced many people to these drugs. The bus’s name, Furthur, suggested a destination that could be reached only by expanding one’s view of reality. Neal Cassady drove the bus and helped keep the journey lively, according to many accounts.
Robert Stone wrote about the trip in his memoir Prime Green. The Pranksters filmed much of what they did, and some of that material has been released in documentaries and videos. A version of their Acid Test footage was edited by Kesey’s team and distributed as The Acid Test.
The group also had a relationship with the outlaw motorcycle gang the Hells Angels, a connection described by Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, and Allen Ginsberg. In 1969, Furthur and some Pranksters attended Woodstock and the Texas Pop Festival.
Kesey wrote and performed in works about the Pranksters, and in the 1980s and 1990s he toured with them. He died in 2001.
The original Furthur bus sits at Kesey’s Oregon farm. In 2005 it was pulled out for restoration, and Kesey refused to let the Smithsonian acquire the real bus.
Memorials and films followed. In 2003, Ken Babbs organized a memorial for Kesey in Eugene, Oregon, with proceeds used to fund a Kesey memorial sculpture. The sculpture features Kesey reading to children and was designed by Peter Helzer. The project drew support from friends and fans, including Bob Weir, Paul Newman, and Michael Douglas.
Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood released the documentary Magic Trip (2011) about the Merry Pranksters. In 2014, Zane Kesey and a friend funded a 50th‑anniversary Furthur bus trip through Kickstarter. The trip took place from June to September 2014, covering more than 15,000 miles with 53 events in 29 states over 75 days. Filmmakers documented the journey in a film called Going Furthur.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 19:20 (CET).