Ken Kesey, author of the famous novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), was a Stanford grad from Oregon who became a member of the CIA funded LSD experiment titled MKULTRA. This experiment played a pivotal role in Kesey’s involvement in the counterculture as it turned him onto the drug that he would eventually turn so many others onto throughout the 1960’s. It also served as inspiration for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which resembled his experience as being a guinea-pig for government experiments. The success of that novel helped provide Kesey with the funding and notoriety necessary to eventually hold some of the most famous San Francisco happenings known as the “Acid Tests” at his home. These Acid Tests were parties at the home of Ken Kesey and were designed to turn people onto LSD while providing an environment that would enhance or supplement that experience. The Grateful Dead commonly played shows at the events and a host of fluorescent paints, strobe lighting, and other psychedelic effects were utilized in order to create a great experience for users. These tests served as inspiration for some of Allen Ginsberg‘s poetry as well as for the novel The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe.
In the Year 1964 Kesey needed to go to New York City as a result of the new novel he was working on. Kesey, his friend Neal Cassady and a few other decided to take a cross country trip out of a school bus they named Further. The group of friends decided to call themselves the Merry Pranksters. The purpose of the trip was to experience a cross country toad trip while taking large amounts of LSD and to make art out of everyday life. After the trip ended they began hosting the Acid Tests.
Poster advertising the Acid Tests with the phrase in bold “can you pass the acid test?”
This video shows some footage taken from the Acid Test graduation ceremony. Early on in the video Neal Cassady, a member of The Merry Pranksters, can be seen handing out papers. Later on in the video the event-goers can be seen dancing while strobe lights flicker throughout the room. The mood of the event seems to be encapsulated in the video. It is clearly a very psychedelic based event.
The interview begins 45 seconds into the clip and begins with Kesey stating, “The Acid Test was breaking out into an area in which it had no specific goals. It was just discovering what there was out there if you just continued to move away from the norm…. It was a test and there people who passed and there were people who didn’t pass.” On the Grateful Dead he says, “They weren’t just playing what was on the music sheets. They were playing what was in the air.”
This is a short clip from the documentary called “Magic Trip” directed by Alex Gibney, which includes loads of footage actually shot by the pranksters as they drove across America. In this clip some information is given about the acid tests and some footage of the pranksters can be seen inside Further.
The World They Imagined 