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And there was just...

... of electrical impulses.

It was all slightly unbelievable.

Can somebody give me a mic ?

And would somebody please turn off the fucking reverb ?

Thank you.

Take one.

When did the '60s begin ?

That might seem obvious.

Everyone remembers them this way...

but really the early '60s looked like this:

a black-and-white picket-fence world still stuck in the '50s.

But in 1964, this man, Ken Kesey,

took an LSD-fueled bus trip across the country

that changed everything.

Kesey lit the fuse for the explosion of the '60s.

Who was Ken Kesey ?

He looks innocent enough, doesn't he ?

Not like the kind of guy to take massive amounts of LSD.

While in college, Kesey married

his junior high school sweetheart, Faye.

As a college athlete, Kesey showed promise both

as a football player and a wrestler.

Kesey also liked performing as an actor and a ventriloquist.

He loved the magic trick

of speaking through other people.

Ken, when did you decide to become a writer ?

I never said I wanted to be a writer.

I'm a magician.

Writing is just one of the tricks that I do.

And quite a trick it was.

By 1964, at the age of 29,

Kesey was one of America's greatest writers.

His first two published novels were

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"

and "Sometimes a Great Notion."

Yet, at the height of his success,

Ken traded his typewriter for a movie camera.

If Shakespeare were writing today,

I don't think he would use a quill pen.

So I started going out and taping,

with tape recorders, and filming,

to see if...

people talked like they do in novels, and they don't.

With a group of friends, Kesey set out to make a road movie.

Their trip would become a legend,

but few ever saw the film.

There were technical problems.

Their voices are on audiotape

but almost never in sync with the picture.

Again the transmission of the '27 Buick

into second gear around the corner at 34th and Dearborn--

or was it Clark ?

Somewhere.

Here's a scene with Neal Cassady,

the famous speed-taking, real-life inspiration

for Jack Kerouac's famous novel "On the Road."

Bet he-- Uh-oh, say...

For 40 years, Kesey and his friends edited the film,

never getting what they wanted.

Then it was boxed away, forgotten, collecting dust.

Now we're going back to the vaults,

using the rare film and audio interviews

of Ken and his friends to bring the story back to life.

Let's go, trickery !

Unnecessarily, Mr. Cassady proceeded north.

Ha-ha !

* Yeah

* Yeah *

Car wreck, children, to the left-- wreck.

It's a journey through life, you know.

When did the idea for this trip first occur to you ?

1963 came and everything changed.

We'd gone back, me and George and Faye, to New York.

extends its welcome.

The shops on the avenues.

The new hotels, restaurants... the sidewalk cafes,

the hit shows, the tinsel of Broadway.

We had gone back to see the opening of

"Cuckoo's Nest" on Broadway,

with Kirk Douglas playing McMurphy,

and he was terrific.

daytime diversionsrt of our

as we were cruising around the city,

we took a drive out to Queens, where the construction

was going on for the World's Fair.

is to be erected, site

they're doing it at the moment,

the symbol of the theme of the New York World's Fair.

The Unisphere !

And by dialing 1964,

I launch the final phase of this great effort.

We looked at it and said, "Boy, this is spectacular.

We're gonna want to come see this."

We vowed next year we'd go back to New York

to the World's Fair.

On the way back, I was driving across country

in a big old nice station wagon

with a couple of my buddies, nibbling on cactus.

Here in the ABC newsroom in New York,

we first received a flash of--

As we were driving along, Kennedy began to be killed.

President Kennedy's motorcade

in Downtown Dallas.

The first reports say that President Kennedy

has been seriously wounded by this shooting.

and waiting for some wordt

on the condition of the president.

officially confirmed. is

President Kennedy and Governor John Connally

have been cut down by assassin's bullets

in Downtown Dallas.

Everywhere you went, you looked in people's eyes,

and they all felt the same thing.

It wasn't just sadness,

it was a loss of an innocence,

the loss of the idea that always the good is going to prevail.

The tragedy of this day

is beyond any instant comprehension.

There's no way to even nearly depict the pain

and the feeling of crisis.

The thing that all of us sort of feel when it's real dark.

an ordinary Saturday.

Things have changed.

This world that I was presenting with these words,

I began to suspect might not have a whole lot to do

with the world of this.

So we decided to go travel across the country.

I love to drive across the United States.

Go to the World's Fair, and come back across,

just to experience the...

the American landscape and "heartscape."

We were gonna take the same station wagon we came back in,

and pretty soon Babbs was home and he wanted to go.

for five years,rine Corps

flew helicopters in Vietnam,

and came out in May of '64,

got out of the Marine Corps-- I had enough of that.

Babbs was stalking around,

this is just after he got out of the Marines.

He began to assign names to them.

He became the Intrepid Traveler

and these were his Merry Band of Pranksters.

Swashbuckler became my nickname.

Gretch had come down from Oregon, we'd met her.

at the University of Oregon.

My intention was to get a ride.

I was gonna work in New York,

swimming at the World's Fair in water ballet,

'cause that's something I knew how to do--

The Rockettes in water.

Hagen was there.

He's an old friend from Oregon, fraternity brother.

He had a camera.

Sandy... he was a phenomenon.

He was in the nuthouse.

He was like the id

stripped of everything else.

He was just there.

At his worst, he was crazy,

and at his best, he was a genius.

Jane Burton was a professor in philosophy from Stanford.

She was pregnant and she was hungry all the time,

so she says, "Well, I'm generally famished."

And so she became known as Generally Famished.

It got to be kind of a party.

It's hard to describe it,

just a-- a bunch of lunatics running around acting idiotic

trying to get to the East Coast somehow.

I met Ken on Perry Lane.

Chloe was the Gertrude Stein of our scene.

pretty insane actually.

I really dug everybody for doing it.

Zonker was just there.

He wasn't even planning--

we weren't planning to take him-- we barely knew him.

Every time something would happen,

he'd fall asleep, and he had this snore...

Okay, here's Stark Naked.

Now, I'm attracted to her, there's no question about it,

but she's just so strange.

Ken's house for a weekendto

and that's how I met everybody.

There was just a great deal of general joviality

and talking and laughing and dancing,

and even then it was like a troupe of minstrels and mimes.

Their presence was very beautiful.

wild crazies wasn't true.

We weren't long-haired and we weren't irresponsible.

There was an American sense--

that's why we always wore red, white and blue

and flew the flag,

it was to try to cool the people out and say,

"Hey, look, this may look strange to you,

"but get used to it.

It's American, and without it we're a dead nation."

there were so many of us,

friends and everything,

too many of us to go in one or two cars,

we decided we'd buy a bus and we'd all travel together.

* Put on your red dress baby

* 'Cause we going out tonight *

We took a 1939 International Harvester's school bus.

I got out there with a blindfold.

It was your left brain working

before it even knew it was the left brain.

* I'm pretty sure now baby

* 'Cause you know you know *

* You're gonna knock 'em dead *

painter among us.

* Yeah

appeal to me at all,

because I thought it looked really good the way it was,

orange with black stripes.

Once it was obvious that it was gonna happen,

I just went ahead.

The challenge was to mix it up there

so it would be interesting to look at.

Somebody just took an old broom up on the top

and spilled some paint around

and, you know, people walked around with their bare feet

on the bus, leaving footprints of paint.

First it was black and white,

then a million different psychedelic colors,

and then it would be painted over.

I think they must've painted it over five or ten times.

if we're gonna do this bus trip,

let's film it."

We bought real color film, 16 millimeter,

and we'd gotten several real 16-millimeter cameras

and we decided we're gonna make a film.

So what kind of film were you making ?

A feature like "Gone with the Wind" ?

Yeah.

Did anyone on board know how to use the cameras ?

None of us knew how to do anything that we were doing.

* I'm pretty sure you're gonna knock 'em dead *

I heard the bus was called "Further."

Right.

What does "Further" mean ?

Oh, I get that question a lot.

It always kind of disappoints me.

What, that people ask you what further means ? Uh-huh.

Well, I could look it up in the dictionary

and tell you that it means farther along than this, but--

No, no, no, no. I'm pretty disappointed in myself.

"Farther" is a distance.

Further is a bus.

One is a philosophical concept,

the other is a measurement.

What do you think, Ken ?

We needed to do some modifications.

We were at a welding shop that was also a junkyard

and we saw this big commercial clothes dryer

and it looked like a tank turret,

and we decided we wanted a turret on the top.

So we had this welder guy

cut a big hole on the top of the bus.

I had a motorcycle that we took along,

so we had the platform welded on the back of it

that we could carry the motorcycle and a generator on.

Chuck had donated a 5 kW gas generator.

a road trip so appealing ?

We weren't old enough to be beatniks,

and we were a little too old to be hippies.

But everybody I knew

had read "On the Road,"

and it opened up the doors to us

just the same way drugs did.

It gave us a new way to look at America, and it stirred us up.

"So in America when the sun goes down

"and I sit on the old broken down river pier

"watching the long, long skies over New Jersey

"and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable

"huge bulge over to the West Coast,

"and all that road going,

"I think of Dean Moriarty,

I think of Dean Moriarty."

* Oh

* I'm the type of guy who will never settle down *

* Where pretty girls are well you know that I'm around... *

A two-tone pink-and-purple Dodge

riding low on tortured shocks,

spurting smoke, races across the curb,

over the bridge, and skids to the porch.

Slams.

And Kesey stands, hands on hips, watching the arrival.

The car made a rapid approach, and he fit into this place.

There was eight to five

when you're getting through there.

People were hollering, "Nobody could park there !

"You can't fit it through !

No, no, come on, Cassady, come on, man."

* With my two fists of iron *

* But I'm going nowhere

* Oh yeah I'm the type of guy that likes to roam around *

* I'm never in one place *

* I roam from town to town

Before the smoke had cleared,

there was this guy with no shirt on talking a mile a minute.

We all knew who he was.

This was Dean Moriarty-- couldn't believe it--

our famous Dean Moriarty.

* Yeah I'm a wanderer

* Yeah a wanderer

* I roam around, around...

I'd read "On the Road,"

so I knew he was supposed to be Dean Moriarty,

but I didn't like that character in the book too much,

and I liked Neal better.

All of a sudden, out pops this man, almost from nowhere.

He reminded me more of an Irish leprechaun at first.

When he opened his mouth, he said about 40 words,

and all of a sudden,

everything in the universe was, and is all right,

and all beautiful and all funny and meaningful,

all at the same time.

* Yeah I'm the type of guy that likes to roam around *

* I'm never in one place...

For me, I'm watching it all and thinking,

"Wow, he kind of looks like my dad,

and my dad is gonna drive the bus !"

* ... Drive around the world *

* 'Cause I'm a wanderer

* Yeah a wanderer *

He came along kind of as a father figure.

Says, "I gotta take care of you boys, understand,

"change your tires.

Here I got this 8-ton jack, I got this lug wrench."

He goes, "You don't even have a lug wrench in your goddamn bus."

"Here, look, I got us a couple of spare inner tubes,

"those boot things-- you never saw a boot before,

"it probably goes inside the spare tire,

and a big tire, we're talking about 10..."

We started out in La Honda,

and there was all this big deal,

and we had been getting ready for days

and packing and fixing

and finally it was the moment, we were leaving La Honda

and everybody gathered around and waved us goodbye

and we climbed on the bus.

Honk the horn !

And it started off and it went out the gate

and across the bridge and ran out of gas !

Well, the moment of departure was beautiful.

We ran out of gas on Kesey's bridge.

We figured at that rate, y'know, 25 feet an hour,

we had a week to get to New York, we weren't worried.

This is taking disorganization to some sort of peak.

It was just ludicrous.

And in some way or another, that was just, like,

the perfect omen for the start of this trip.

I used to think I was Napoleon, too.

We set out just like in "Easy Rider"

or "Travels with Charley,"

where Steinbeck sets out to seek the soul of America.

It looked like a traveling pleasure palace.

We could ride across the country in total comfort.

It was big and roomy and spacious--

until we got all the people in it,

then it was crowded.

It was the exact opposite of a pleasure palace.

... 72 disciples.

I was on the first 24 hours that it took us to get from

La Honda to San Jose.

I don't know, what is it, 40 miles ?

It took us 24 hours to get to San Jose.

and mechanical spasmsr

started happening on the bus,

and the engine was sputtering,

so we pulled into a gas station.

Some old gas station man took a look at that thing,

looked at the engine and says,

"You'll never get that thing past Oklahoma."

Well, I'm saying to myself,

Jesus Christ, this thing is fucked.

Look, it's painted weird,

the mechanics behind it are equally as weird.

While everybody was working on the engine,

I was messing around with the headset, and was going,

"We're on our way...

to San Jose !"

How was your stay...

in San Jose ?!

While I was doing that, I happened to turn around,

and I noticed Chloe looking really glum.

I said, "What's wrong ?"

And she says, "If it takes us this long to get to San Jose,"

she says, "we'll never make it to New York City !"

She says, "I can't take this, this is too chaotic."

And that was as far as she lasted on the bus.

Yeah, I was pretty glad to get off.

I mean, thank God I'm not crossing the country in it.

And you got back across the country

by more civilized means, I imagine ?

TWA.

* TWA's Your Way

There's been a one-step removal, I think,

from our connection to life.

And I'll tell you where you can see it, go to LA.

We can't see anymore, we can barely hear anymore.

When we look, we're not looking at;

we're looking for.

I tell you, Hollywood is as soulless an idea

of what life looks like.

* I'm going out west where I belong *

What color is World War II ?

World War I is even a better example.

What color is World War I ?

It's black and white,

whereas the Civil War is in Technicolor.

* And I'll walk

* They twist

* And I'll twist *

What happens if all of this stuff that's being sold us

has damn near closed the door

on any possibility of our doing anything new,

on our doing anything except traveling

in the same little circle ?

And, if that is true, how do we break out of it ?

So you donate blood, then there's a sick cat,

not being approved of and all,

as the son, you see, would be, so you have a mania...

All you can do is experience this thing.

This, as near as I can see, is what's going on,

as near as I can record it.

It may not make sense.

I'm just trying to open up like a camera

and see it clearly for a moment.

I remember when we first headed out of LA,

out of Ken Babbs' place, where we spent a couple days

painting his swimming pool and so forth.

When the bus headed out,

Babbs was living in San Juan Capistrano

with his wife, Anita, and his kids

and we went through Capistrano

and he realized this is his Merry Band of Pranksters

and he better climb aboard.

The original Prankster credo that started

the whole Prankster movement

was one of-- you start off by saying,

"Never trust a Prankster."

Because no matter how I...

try, I will eventually...

lie to you, even though I may not want to...

if I say one thing today...

Go ahead, would you repeat that again ?

"Awooooooo."

Very funny.

When we started out with the bus,

I realized I wasn't gonna be able to write a book about this,

because you can't.

It's an experience.

This wasn't literature anymore,

this jumped off the pages and onto the streets.

* I should have quit you *

went across the desert

and headed for Arizona.

* I should have quit you baby *

Cassady talked a lot.

We'd take turns riding shotgun with him

so he'd have somebody to talk to while he was driving.

He was a radio.

He just went on and on and on.

It was almost impossible for him to ever shut off.

He couldn't help himself.

It had a lot to do with speed.

Major portion, critical point...

Okay, settle in, settle in.

Attracting the cops, and how to deal with

concealing the drugs that we had,

that was always a consideration

throughout the whole bus trip

because the cops were stopping us

because they'd never seen anything like it.

I wasted your time, that's why I'm not--

Cassady would always be out there talking to them

and he'd say, "Oh yeah, officers," he'd say.

"You can see what they're like back there," he said,

"but I'm doing my best to keep them in control."

Unloosen that thing.

We're having a brief equipment...

Our instant cover was always to get the cameras out and run out

and say we were making a movie.

We don't have a camera with any film.

People didn't think we were hippies

or that we were drug freaks.

That wouldn't have occurred to anybody

because it wasn't in the news yet.

Shut up !

How did you get mixed up with LSD in the first place ?

I came out of the University of Oregon

the prettiest little boy you've ever seen.

I didn't smoke, I didn't drink,

I went to Stanford on a Ford Foundation Fellowship.

And while at Stanford,

I was... given the opportunity

to go to the Stanford hospital

and take part in the LSD experiments.

How did you become a volunteer for these experiments ?

I, at the time, was training for

the Olympics team and was--

As a wrestler ? Yeah, as a wrestler.

I'd never been drunk on beer, let alone done any drugs,

but this is the American government.

The study of LSD continues in laboratories and hospitals

throughout the United States.

They paid us $25 a day

to come down there and then they gave us stuff.

What is LSD ?

How does it work ?

When did it all begin ?

It all began in a laboratory very much like this one.

In 1938, Dr. Albert Hoffman in Switzerland

was looking for new drugs

in the treatment of migraine headaches.

He had been studying mold that grows on rye plants.

Now, it turned out that these substances were of no use

in the treatment of migraine headaches.

However, it was found that these substances could produce

a change in mental state

closely resembling some forms of insanity.

In particular, schizophrenia.

When I was asked to do these drug experiments,

I thought these drugs might give us a way to

cure insanity, to overcome depression.

That was part of what we thought we were doing.

What kind of preparation were you given for it ?

Were you given any ? None at all.

I'd read a little piece in "LIFE Magazine"

about how they'd given it to cats,

and cats were afraid of mice once they'd had LSD.

What was that very first trip like, though,

under the experimental conditions ?

It was on a ward, on a nuthouse ward.

You'd go in a little room, there'd be a bed,

and a stand with some water on it,

and a tape recorder, and nothing else.

There was a little window right here

with a wire through it,

and you could look out and see the people

out in the other room.

And when I came out of it,

I felt like it was like discovering a hole

that went into the center of the Earth

and you could see jewelry down there

and you wanted your people to go down and enjoy it.

* Trailer for sale or rent *

* Rooms to let 50¢ *

* No phone no pool, no pets *

* Ain't got no cigarettes... *

Cassady drove all night, and everybody slept or didn't sleep,

depending on what they were doing.

Bus supposed to hit to Tucson, arrived...

Oh, there, you can't--

Just as it were-- Police, how you doing ?

A bunch of previous plans '69-- oh, all right, honest.

Especially South.

Barry Goldwatertra-conservative

was running for president.

What did you make of Kesey's Goldwater stunt in Phoenix ?

I was kind of puzzled by the need to get into

the politics of Barry Goldwater.

I kinda thought the whole thing was sort of ridiculous.

A vote for Barry is a vote for fun.

It was a tongue-in-cheek thing.

We wanted to wave the flag,

but waving the flag in Downtown Phoenix

kind of seemed like you're for Goldwater,

so we painted "A Vote for Barry is a Vote for Fun"

and then drove down the main street of Phoenix.

Backwards.

Even as you were driving the bus across the country,

reviews were coming in for "Sometimes a Great Notion"

and they were peculiar. Yes.

They didn't know exactly what to say about it.

"Cuckoo's Nest" was a phenomenon,

it received nothing but good reviews.

Most people are surprised to learn

that you'd never even seen the movie.

You even threatened to sue the producers.

I told these liars, "I'll never see the movie."

They emphasized the melodrama.

Who's the villain in "Cuckoo's Nest" ?

The Nurse. No.

The Combine is the villain,

and the Big Nurse is the minion of that,

but she's not the villain.

"I'm mopping near the ward door

"when a key hits it from the other side

"and I know it's the Big Nurse.

"She's carrying her woven wicker bag,

"full of a thousand parts

"she aims to use in her duties today--

"wheels and gears and tiny pills that gleam like porcelain,

needles and forceps and rolls of copper wire."

Good morning, Miss Ratched.

Good morning.

Good morning, Miss Ratched.

"The Big Nurse tends to get real put out

"if something keeps her outfit from running

"like a precision-made machine,

what she calls 'adjusted.'"

Medication time.

"She works with an eye to adjusting the Outside world too.

"Working alongside others like her

who I call the 'Combine.'"

Chief ?

Writing that story from the point of view of that Indian,

that's what makes that book.

And I don't know any Indians,

I don't know where that Indian came from.

Those first few pages of "Cuckoo's Nest"

were written on peyote.

I've always felt humbled by that character.

Without the character of that Indian,

the book is a melodrama.

Y'know, it's a straight battle between Murphy

and the Big Nurse.

Isn't it true that the inspiration for the book

came from your real-life experiences ?

I got a job at the nuthouse

and worked from midnight to 8:00.

Make no mistake about it.

Being crazy is painful.

Looking out through the little window, through my crazed eyes,

I saw that these people have something going

and there's a truth to it.

It gave me an empathy.

This was, to me, supposed to be a revolutionary novel.

It wasn't Freudian man against woman.

It was man against machine.

"I took a deep breath and bent over and took the levers.

"I heaved my legs under me

"and felt the grind of weight at my feet

"and heard the wires and connections

"tearing out of the floor.

"I was able to get an arm around it

"and my other hand under it

"and let the momentum carry the panel

"through the screen and window with a ripping crash.

"I put my hand on the sill and vaulted over the pane.

"I ran across the grounds.

"I felt like I was flying.

Free."

Oh boy, it was just hot across that desert.

And being hot and what we'd do,

we'd just go look for a cool place.

Merging traffic, merging traffic.

Merging traffic.

Yield, yield !

Right away !

We'd ridden all night the night before,

and I'd gone to sleep in one of the upper bunks and my purse

had slipped down between the bunk and the side of the bus

and had gone out the open window.

It had everything in it.

Here I was, pregnant, traveling with a bunch of mad men

and I didn't even have a dime.

Watermelons, watermelons, watermelons, watermelons !

If I'd had my money, it wouldn't have bothered me at all,

because I could have walked off at any stage.

I could have gone to the nearest bus at any time.

Now, I was trapped.

off the roadssady drove right

and started driving towards this little pond,

and got stuck right in the sand.

He drove it-- "vrooom."

And there we were, shocked as can be.

Ah yes, stuck.

Stuck in the mud in Arizona desert in the summertime.

Cassady.

God, he was having a good time.

It was hot, boy, let me tell you it was hot.

It was blazing hot-- there I am.

That's me and there's Kesey

right behind me in the sunglasses

and we're all looking at it and we're stuck deep in the mud.

For no other reason than the fact that--

if you don't get out, get out.

Kesey had sent someone off on the motorcycle

to go look for help.

And then Kesey had this brainstorm that,

since we were gonna be stuck for awhile,

we should take LSD.

So I'm going to take some LSD.

I want Babbs to take some.

Cassady, do you want to take some ?

I-- I would, yes, I would.

The ridiculous thing was that the acid

was just mixed into a jar of orange juice

that was in the refrigerator.

Nobody had any idea what the dosage was,

it was this sort of deal where you shook up the jar

and passed it around and took a swig.

As the acid came on, the setting up of the filming

was starting to happen too.

What else we got up there ?

Another camera, don't we ?

We're going to take the Arriflex, two magazines.

We're going to have one magazine on the Arriflex.

We're going to have the other camera with the zoom lens

also mounted on a tripod.

We're gonna run the zoom lens on the tripod.

Was he filming that ?

No.

That'd be ungodly.

My Merry Band of Pranksters

won't be wandering around in the dirt.

Come on, come on.

No, no, none of this misery stuff.

Come on, this is the Merry gang.

Keep it moving.

It's Paula.

That's stretchin' Gretchen, she's mighty fetchin' !

Always scratching the kitchen matches and never itchy !

There she is out there.

* You know when you have a dream *

* Where whales carry you out to sea *

Once I hit the pond, I realized I was really high.

* The little creatures had their little wings *

The water opened itself up to me in a new dimension.

There was no murkiness,

it was super clear, real crystal.

It was just there,

for myself and itself to groove on each other.

* If the birds fly in the ocean *

* And the whales swim in the clouds *

It was a joy.

Farewell forever, Paula.

As she sinks beneath the depths.

In the next feature, you shall see emerge a slime queen.

The High Priestess of Pranksters.

That's the slime, the algae.

It was talking to me,

it was welcoming me into its realm of existence.

* Where the sunrise sets

* And the sunset rises

It was like the nature spirits,

the stuff in there, it was saying,

"Finally we're in contact with a human being,

we've been trying to get through to you guys for awhile."

They were happy, and I was happy.

* Whales want to love your face *

* Whales want to be your friend *

* Whales want to hug you

That's Miss Slime of 1964.

* Carry our souls

* Through the clouds

* In the sky

These horses just showed up

and added such a nice kind of backdrop effect.

Oh, there are the horses.

It was incredibly beautiful.

I don't remember much reaction to these horses.

To me, they looked kind of old and flea-bitten.

I was thinking about how nice it would look to

pour some of those paints--

let's see what they look like.

After we took the acid, I think it was Kesey's idea,

we took bottles of dope paint,

which are used for painting model airplanes,

and it's enamel-based paint,

so when you put it on the water, it floats.

I'll never drink downstream

from the Merry Pranksters' campsite.

So we had lots of colors,

so we were dipping the colors in there

and watching it all marbleize.

We took Zonker's white T-shirt

and put it in the water with the paint and invented tie-dye.

God, I was pissed.

They said, "Oh, it's water-soluble.

Oh, don't worry about it, man."

"Worry about what ?

That's one of my clean T-shirts."

"Fuck your clean T-shirts," somebody said.

George said, "Back up," just like I do.

"Spin around."

Fuck you.

God, watch this thing.

Actually I was having a good time.

Stark Naked really started wigging out.

She's definitely stoned on acid.

We put all our acid in one quart ball jar of lemonade

and I remember seeing her run down to the refrigerator

and get it out and upend it.

Get a picture of that over here, Mike, with the...

Get that.

Kathy was loaded.

Hagen says, "I'm gonna make a movie star out of her

no matter what it takes."

You know, it's the pretty girl, movie-star trip.

The guy with the camera comes along and says,

"Hey, pretty girl, how'd you like to

stand in front of my camera ?"

"Sure, why not ?

You're going to make me a star."

Judy Garland in the drugstore, whatever that trip is, you know.

Hey, here's the paint.

No, no, two more of these, I think we'll be able to

start using film.

The first signs of strain were beginning to show

on some of the healthy, young faces

and I was trying to keep things together there

because I could suddenly see everything coming to pieces.

There was this mad woman on my hands.

What have I gotten myself into ?

Throughout the bus trip you seemed to enjoy the chaos

but at the same time, gently guide the action.

People felt that enlightenment

was going entirely with the flow.

But that's like being the ball in a football game.

I'd rather be the quarterback.

I wanna handle the ball,

I don't wanna just be thrown around.

Ken was trying to run this whole thing and be all philosophical,

and he was caught up in a million different trips.

* And how long will it go on ? *

* How long can we wait for help ? *

* When no help is coming for...

It reminds me of the mad Ophelia.

I don't remember this at all.

I remember swimming in the lake, but none of this.

For Stark, obviously, it was too much to bear.

For Gretch and Babbs, they fell in love.

Would you like to play my feet ?

Starting the bus trip, I was Kesey's lover

but after I met Babbs,

he and I became lovers, and stayed so.

I wish I could always...

Okay !

The camera's fucked up again.

Hey, hey !

The tractor has indeed arrived,

they're going to pull us out of this swamp.

Sandy's there, scratching his balls.

Okay, let's go !

Come on !

Come on, faster !

Whoa !

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

Try to reverse that.

I think you're pulling against each other.

We're going !

Keep her moving, keep her moving !

Keep her moving, keep her moving !

She and Babbs had developed a great affair

since Romeo and Juliet.

* I got my mojo working babe *

* And I'm going to try it on you *

The love relationships was one of the very obvious things

that was going on.

I mean, nothing was hidden, you know ?

* And I'm gonna try it out on you *

Babbs was really worried that Kesey

would be really pissed off,

because Kesey was single, because his wife wasn't there,

so he was unattached, sexually.

* And now I'm gonna try it on you *

* Oh yeah *

He did sulk for awhile,

but he kind of woke up out of his stupor

and looked over and said, "Nothing lasts."

So that became one of the Prankster mottos, too.

"Nothing lasts."

All this stuff that we went through,

all these "intertanglements" of our relationships,

our marriages, and our loves and lovers,

I think all of this is Soap Opera 101.

It's like we're all in this class together

and we went through it for several weeks on the bus.

Stark Naked never quite recovered from Wikieup.

All her molecules, I don't think,

came back together.

Then she climbs out onto the platform in the back

and pretty soon all the truckers were honking behind us--

honk, honk, honk, honk.

And Cassady couldn't figure out what was going on,

so somebody looked out the back window

and there she had taken the blanket off her

and she was just standing out on the back deck

just flaunting herself.

She had all the semis heading for Houston backed up behind us.

Nobody wanted to pass us because they were all watching her.

That kind of madness is only terrifying and miserable

to the people who are outside of it.

To someone who's inside of it, it's really not.

I just wanted to go into the darkness

and be alone with my own thoughts.

I think my psychic vision in relationship to myself

was that I was getting a little bit homesick.

Then, not long after that, we pulled into Larry McMurtry's,

which was kind of a nice, middle-class,

very tidy neighborhood.

Larry lives in this upper, upper-middle-class

collegiate section of town,

and this electric, multicolored circus bus shows up.

Larry appeared at the bus with a little child

and it reminded me of my daughter.

I jumped off the bus

and I guess, much to his amazement, grabbed the baby.

And she opens her arms wide

and the blanket that she had wrapped around her dropped.

And she's standing there stark naked.

I thought she looked just fine, as a matter of fact.

I think it might have been

a little bit of a problem for Larry McMurtry,

as far as his neighbors were concerned.

Things just kinda continued to go downhill from then on.

I guess I was going through a thing with Michael Hagen.

And it might have been his attention that he paid

to other women that disturbed me.

It must've been about two or three in the morning.

I couldn't sleep

and I just felt like kind of walking it off.

I was in a bad mood, actually,

and I went out in my bare feet.

Where are you taking me, where are my friends ?

Do my friends know I'm here ?

They held me in a cell for a little while,

then they had someone come to talk to me.

By this time, I was just a complete wreck.

Where am I ?

You're in a hospital.

People were asking me a lot of strange questions,

and I just didn't answer any of them.

Except I think I gave them my name and that was all.

Name, rank and serial number, so to speak.

Where am I ?

Right around here to the desk.

You're in a hospital.

Hello, I'm a nurse.

What's your name ?

What happened to Stark Naked ?

One of her friends in San Francisco came out

and got her and she ended up going back home with him

and that was as far as she got on the trip.

Hurry up, hurry up, we'll get there in the nick of time.

Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up,

we'll get there in the nick of time.

We sort of abandoned her.

We figured anybody that couldn't hold their shit together

just wasn't gonna be able to make it.

You know, we had a trip to do, we had to keep on moving.

And it also made me nervous, thinking,

"Who's going to be left behind next ?

Is it gonna be me ?"

Weren't you concerned that

this trip was beginning to unravel ?

I'll tell you a thing that I learned

while I was working in the asylum

that I think is the most important thing

I've ever learned.

Every once in awhile, all the power,

the attention that you have,

comes to bear on exactly what you're doing

and doesn't decide whether it's good or bad,

just decides that it is,

and the only thing you can do is enjoy the ride.

* He's coming in to New Orleans *

* When the saints go marching in *

* In *

Well, Cassady wanted to show us New Orleans

because he was familiar with it

and he was so excited to be in New Orleans.

It was a big, big deal.

He had his favorite haunts, he was kind of a tour guide.

We went down to the heart of the jazz district.

Cassady was a big jazz aficionado.

He loved jazz.

Ah, the Old Absinthe Bar.

The Old Absinthe Bar.

I remember that I was there once.

I was there once.

... warm, 11:00 in the morning on Canal Street

in New Orleans.

It's this feeling of everything moving slower and slower...

Slower and slower,

caught in some kind of molasses mind warp, we were.

That was where we started to drink mint juleps.

I think we went down in a basement, too.

We saw-- somebody had just moved into the other room

and there was a piano

and he went in there and he sat down and he started to play.

* My baby left me

* My baby left me a long time ago *

I know Kesey was just crazy about him.

God, he'd come over and he'd say,

"Wow, this guy is great !"

He wanted to take him with us or something like that.

* ... walked out the door

Air's still thick with dust motes

swirling and following us out the door

and up and into-- onto the bus and there we went,

"Moonlight Sinatra" boarding with us.

And we realized we gotta dip this sucker in the water

before he goes off.

So we said, "We're gonna find some water," and he says,

"Go to Lake Pontchartrain."

He didn't know where it was, he'd just heard about it.

* Lead

* Lead

* Lead me on

* To the light *

You really look at the '60s and what started there.

Music was changed forever.

The feminist movement started there,

the Civil Rights Movement.

While we were driving that bus across the country,

Martin Luther King was in Selma.

Either you give the Negro his God-given right

and his freedom

or you face the fact

of continual social disruption and social chaos.

You have to remember, this is 1964,

and it's right when the Civil Rights thing

was in a very early infancy,

so white-only, black-only consciousness

was still really prevalent in the South.

And the story about Lake Pontchartrain was that

we'd pulled into a black-only area, the lake.

Of course, the Pranksters didn't know that.

They just pulled up to this lake

because they saw it and wanted to go swimming.

We got out-- I'm loaded on acid, right ?

Okay, and all these other guys are loaded on acid.

Okay, here we are.

I think I don't notice that anything is odd,

even at this point.

As we're swimming around in this hot, hot, humid

first-day-of-summer Louisiana day,

I remember looking around the swimming hole

that we'd all just practically ran and jumped into.

I thought, "God, there's a lot of colored people here,

"and there's not very many white people.

Well, there's one and there's one and there's one..."

And I looked around and I had this

sudden realization that I knew every single one of

the white people in that swimming hole.

And then it dawned on me.

"Shit, we just integrated this place."

Then all of a sudden this wave of paranoia

went through us all.

Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That's the kind of thing that could have started a race riot.

I don't believe a word was said,

we all just grabbed everything, jumped on the bus and left.

Babbs just fell down in the yard in Pensacola, Florida.

We went to this place where his old roommates

still lived in Pensacola,

where they'd been Marines together.

We arrived and Babbs' Marine buddy was still at work,

and so Kesey had the idea of making

a little theatrical thing to film.

The Slime Queen will lead the way !

Oh, this is funny.

I remember this really well.

I consider this to be one of the most fucked-up days

on the whole trip.

Being pregnant, I was miserable.

It was just really hot,

and there was no reason to be there

and there's nothing to do, so we did this.

I was trying to be cooperative,

but I can tell you that it really had nothing going for me.

This is some kind of absurd dance, as I recall.

I enjoyed it.

I just wish I could've played the trombone better.

Playing those instruments.

Goddamn it.

Somebody starts playing the saxophone for the first time.

Well, they want it to sound like John Coltrane.

Well, they're not gonna sound like John Coltrane.

That's what made me so mad.

They thought they would just because they wanted to.

But you don't.

It takes practice.

Here's Babbs' friend from Vietnam who rolls in.

Ah, pleased to meet you, sir.

Yes indeed, it's been quite some time.

"Toodle-dy doodle-dy."

Oh yes, it's a little strange since

the Corps, don't you think ?

I've changed my uniform slightly

and this is my new battalion, yes, quite.

Yeah, we've given up helicopters.

Most of these guys can only fly at night.

So we've given up helicopters and we now travel by bus.

It's slower but more deliberate.

We must press onward at all forward speed, fast.

Ahead fast lake.

Tennis anyone...

Where in the hell are we ?

Well, now John, John Babbs.

John Babbs became kind of the semi-quasi navigator,

and became known as "Sometimes Missing,"

because one time when he was mapping us through one town,

we went through another

and when everybody got off the bus to take a leak,

and went on again,

he wasn't there and nobody noticed it 'til about

100 miles later.

But then as we turned around to go pick him up,

here came a car and he jumped out.

He had hitchhiked and caught up with us.

John Babbs was in the backseat waving his arms like this

and trying to get our attention.

So we pulled over and picked him up.

That's how he got the name "Sometimes Missing."

* Well

* You know you took my heart *

Welcome to New Jersey.

Speed 50.

New Jersey Turnpike.

In a way, Cassady saw himself

as a guardian of that trip, and he was.

He was driving, but he was not masterminding the situation.

That was Kesey's trip.

People following him all the time,

egging him on to greater heights of self-indulgence.

And he always did it,

he always tried to be more of this hero

that was this self-indulgent, "On the Road" epic legend.

Yes, sir.

License and registration.

Of course !

Where you heading ?

I think it's Madison Avenue.

We all learned a great deal from Neal Cassady.

This is a guy that knows what he's doing

and this is his medium.

It's words, it's cars, and it's drugs.

Yes, sir, and that's why-- Back on the bus.

Everybody get back on the bus !

I don't wanna see anybody out here.

We could all do making noise, hitting sticks together,

but to be able to use the most advanced of instruments,

which is our mind and our voice.

Cassady could do it better than anybody, using words.

* Love Potion #9

He was like a bus driver coming into his land.

You know, he'd spent a lot of time in the East,

he wasn't from New York, he was from Denver,

but he'd spent a lot of time back there,

y'know, back in the days with Kerouac and Ginsberg

and those guys and, you know,

I think he first learned how to drive

as a parking-lot attendant in New York, as a matter of fact.

* I held my nose I closed my eyes *

* I took a drink

* I didn't know if it was day or night *

* I started kissing everything in sight *

* But when I kissed a cop down at 34th and Vine *

* He broke my little bottle *

* Of Love Potion #9...

I lost Love Potion #9.

Look, there's the Empire State Building, dead ahead.

Seven miles, five miles--

seven-- possibility-- seven miles, Empire.

Manhattan on your right.

Well, coming into New York was exciting

because that was our destination.

Welcome to the Bronx.

I was there, this was it.

I'd made it to New York.

What an unnatural environment when you look at New York,

with the streets and the cars.

* Love Potion #9

* Love Potion #9 *

We are the Merry Band of Pranksters.

When we went into New York City, we were all on top of the bus

playing instruments and tootling around to everybody.

It was a lot of fun interacting with the people.

* You may have heard of jalopies *

* You've heard the noise they make *

* But let me introduce my new Rocket 88 *

* Yes it's great

* Just won't wait

* Everybody likes my Rocket 88 *

* Baby we'll ride in style *

* Movin' all along

it pulled up in New York,s when

and we'd drive all over New York.

It sure felt like you were in an aquarium

on the other side of the glass.

The public always grinned when they saw that bus.

It's like kids when they see an Easter egg.

It's simple.

There it is, it's colored, it's an egg.

Nobody felt the slightest bit threatened by it.

Ken really believed that things could be changed,

that consciousness could be changed.

He saw himself as a kind of liberator for the generation

and he saw the bus trip as a kind of going to New York,

a kind of, you know, Napoleon goes to Paris.

The best the bus ever was was when we drove through Harlem

and had all these people running out and following us along

in Harlem, all these kids.

Some two weeks later, the bus has somehow managed

to get across the country and, once again,

you encountered the bus.

Yes, 1239 Madison Avenue

was where this apartment was that I knew about.

The next morning, the Pranksters showed up.

And they all came in,

with about 500 pounds of equipment.

I mean, they just had wires

and cameras and lights

and it was instantly strewn

from one end of the apartment to the other.

It looked like the bus !

It looked like the inside of the bus.

And so that night, there was this fantastic party

that got sort of out of hand

and the poor doorman kept coming up and saying

everybody was complaining

and it went on and on and on and on.

And everybody was very excited that Kerouac was there,

and he was getting really drunk, and Ginsberg came.

generation best minds of my

"destroyed by madness,

"starving, hysterical, naked,

"dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn

looking for an angry fix..."

Ginsberg is like a sponge.

He can sop up all our poisons.

I bought the record "Howl,"

and he was kind of like a folk singer, to me,

more than a poet.

I knew the sound of him reading

before I read any of his stuff.

"... sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness

"of cold water flats

floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz..."

And when we headed off in the bus,

it was only natural that we should head to New York

and try to find Ginsberg and Kerouac.

Unfortunately, it wasn't like meeting the author,

it was more like,

see if we can get him to respond to our antics.

Which didn't happen.

He was not enthused with our craziness.

The thing you gotta realize about Kerouac,

it was like he was already sort of an old guy

and kind of out of it.

He was already crystallized.

He was kind of a sad character.

We had been accepted by the old gunfighters.

You know, this was the real heavies in our mythologies:

Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsberg.

Neal was more on the right track

when he got started with the Beat movement.

Kerouac and I met him in '45, so he was only 20 then,

and within that year,

he and I had a romance that lasted-- on and off for--

Well, 'til, at least I think the last time

we were in bed together was '66,

so that's 21 years.

I got a whole theory about this man.

What he was was the real smart Catholic boy

who got sucked up by Kerouac.

But he was real poetic, like all these Irish Catholics are,

and he got in with some poets and he got aspirations

and somebody plants a little seed of how great you could be

because you're so great, so-- so sexy, so poetic.

He fell in love with that idea,

which was something he couldn't possibly achieve.

So then he was split between the two worlds.

He couldn't create anything for himself.

He couldn't get it together with a lady and have a good family.

He couldn't go off and be a faggot with Ginsberg.

He couldn't be anything.

It's an exact mimicry of Ginsberg 20 years ago.

Ginsberg used to be wild.

Ginsberg's so cool now.

He used to run over Columbian rooftops

waving genitals and manuscripts.

The whole point of the trip, supposedly--

at least in the beginning--

was that everyone was gonna go to the fair.

All the Pranksters were so excited.

This day, we drove to the fair,

and it was like the hottest 29th of June that ever had been.

the world is coming to the fair.

* I made my reservation

* I'm leaving town tomorrow *

* I'll find somebody new and *

* There'll be no more sorrow *

* That's what I do each time *

* But I can't follow through *

* I can't break away

* Though you make me cry *

* I can't break away...

the world of tomorrow.

Well, see, the whole idea--

this is what drove me up the wall--

was it was going to be made into a movie

of everybody running about at the fair.

Well, nobody kept together, there was nothing to film,

it was all just so dispersed.

We lost Sometimes Missing again.

That's what always happens.

Ken and Babbs were so manic and so high.

They drank this vile yellow concoction.

Swashbuckler, I'll pull out my sword.

Well, of course the one thing I wanted to see

was where the water ballet was supposed to happen.

My whole reason for going to New York

was to try to locate a job possibility.

Babbs and I searched,

and finally found this beautiful pool

and found out they had cancelled the whole water ballet.

also take in the exhibitobably

where the wizardry of modern chemistry

is presented with entertaining showmanship.

* Better things for better living through chemistry *

* For the finer world we want *

* Better things for better living through chemistry *

* That's the promise of DuPont **

The fair was trippy and great.

When you're high, the more variety, the better.

out of this worldtake a journey

into the world of the future.

Forget the world around you, forget the people around you.

You are entering futurama,

alone with your own thoughts.

which was a great thing.

It was a vision of the future of America,

and I-- Ken saw it that way.

The irony is that curved, finned,

corporate America "Tomorrowland,"

as presented at the 1964 World's Fair,

was over before it began.

'64, things were changing.

We didn't know that World's Fairs were a thing of the past.

* I can't break away

* Though you make me cry *

* I can't break away... *

By then, the trip became more important than the destination.

Never mind where we're going,

it doesn't make a difference where you're going.

The whole notion of the trip,

taking acid trip, came out of that summer.

The effect is somewhat like looking through a microscope.

Suddenly, when you look through a microscope,

you discover that there's an invisible world around you

that you hadn't known about before you did it.

The same thing is true of the psychedelic drug.

* Timothy Leary's dead

After the disappointment of the World's Fair,

you headed to Timothy Leary's compound,

the International Foundation for Internal Freedom.

Was it called "IFIF" ?

IFIF.

It was like a 4,000-acre farm outside of Poughkeepsie

in Millbrook, New York.

We teach people how to turn on,

or how to go out of their minds.

By "turn on," we mean tune in, to get beyond

your routine ways of thinking

and acting and experiencing.

* Timothy Leary's dead

Ginsberg is the one that set it all up

because he knew those guys at IFIF

and he thought it would be a great opportunity

for us to meet each other.

It was like the West Coast acidheads

meeting the East Coast acidheads

and having a powwow.

We pulled into their scene,

making a lot of noise, we set off these smoke grenades.

Smoke-bomb delight.

Smoke-bomb delight.

Pranksters at the very castle.

And I have to inform you, just what's exactly going on ?

We're high and they're coming down is what's going on.

after a tripat quiet time

when you just want to be very mellow

and up drives the bus with these speed freaks,

and they come to have fun and play with flutes and--

everybody in the house took one look and fled,

leaving me to welcome them.

* So raise your glass we'll drink a toast *

* To the little man who sells you thrills along the pier *

The whole Millbrook scene,

it was just the other end of the same stick, I think.

We were "scuffy" and didn't have much money

and pulled into this mansion, which was upper crust.

We felt a kinship to them,

but we could also tell that they were wishing that we'd leave.

What everybody anticipated didn't turn out,

it kind of fizzled.

We waited all day for Leary to show up and he just avoided us.

And then he sort of disappeared with Cassady,

and Cassady went upstairs and hung out with--

They didn't want us to go upstairs.

Alpert was very friendly.

He was there.

Just listening to Alpert talk, man,

it seemed like he was a fucking crazy man.

All of my games were, like, going off into the distance.

I got this terrible panic

because, indeed, I was going to cease to exist.

And I got the panic which is the panic that precedes

the psychological death,

because indeed Richard Alpert was dying.

These people scared the shit out of me, man.

They were very clinical and controlled

and we were really free-form.

We were the explorers and they were the scientists.

And so we just entertained ourselves at this waterfall.

* Shake it up baby now *

* Shake it up baby

* Twist and shout

* Come on and twist and shout *

* Come on baby now

* Come on baby

* Come on and work it...

And that's where Kathy Van Leeuwen got her nickname,

"Sensuous Experience."

Sensuous X, yes, I remember her well.

Her name was implied in her very baring,

that is to say her bodily example.

Kathy was Zonker's girlfriend in college

and that's why Zonker went on the trip.

Sensuous.

Oh my God, look at her.

Oh, she's so much like Marilyn Monroe, right ?

* Come on, come on come on baby now *

* Come on baby *

Now I'm wondering at this point

whether my girlfriend has been

having sex with these people or not.

And that's the point at which Kesey started flirting with her,

trying to get her attention,

and he did get her attention.

* Have you

* Ever heard the story about *

* Peggy the pistol ?

He says, "All my dope is yours," as he's fucking my girlfriend.

Thanks, Kesey.

I wanted to get out of New York as quick as possible,

and I was basically telling her that

she could get on the bus, but I was gone.

But then I realized that I really didn't want to

leave her with all these fuckers.

When they were getting ready to leave town, I had to decide,

you know, was I gonna stay or was I gonna go ?

At that point, I was still planning on staying to work.

It didn't work out that way.

I got sucked into the Prankster scene

too much, too heavily.

So I stayed on the bus.

I wasn't there on the way back.

I was so happy to be off of it.

Coming back's a whole 'nother trip.

Cassady, he didn't come back with us.

The trip across was basically

lengths of Neal's driving consciousness,

and then on the way back,

suddenly the driving duties were thrust upon the rest of us.

Everybody took turns, the guys anyway.

That was on the way back.

We just started driving the bus down this abandoned dirt road

and ended up at this incredible lake

and there was nobody there but us.

We decided we wanted to find a spot to take IT-290.

Well, IT-290 was famous.

That's the Rolls-Royce of psychedelics.

Kesey had stolen a jar.

He claimed it was the last jar of IT-290 on the planet.

And so he wanted a very special place

for everybody to take it.

So we built a little fire and made a little campground

and popped the IT-290 and had the trip.

Oh, it was wonderful, it was even better than acid.

It's a hallucinogen, but very calm.

Acid can have a hard edge to it sometimes,

but this is very calming.

Colors very vivid.

It was very communal,

in that you felt connected to everybody.

I thought that this was as American as you could get,

because we were exploring a new territory,

just the same way we went to the moon

or sent Lewis and Clark expedition here to Oregon.

It was part of our American personality.

You find a cave,

nobody's been in it, you go in it.

You try to go down deeper into the ocean

and up higher in the sky

and these drugs were opening a door to new landscapes.

Once you're through that door

and you look out into this vast room

with all these windows onto new vistas,

you become tremendously excited

and want to do what you can to explore it,

because you could look around and you saw

that there weren't human footprints

all over this landscape.

* I saw her standing on the corner *

How did the dynamics on the bus change

when some of the wives joined the trip back ?

At one point, it got all couples.

At one point, there were 14 of us on the bus,

seven men and seven women.

Lots of them were married,

but not to the person that they were coupling with.

I remember one morning we woke up and everybody was fucking,

the whole bus was shaking.

* You're the one you're the one *

* You're the one

* You're the one

* Young girl

* Young girl

It got a lot heavier on the way back.

That was fervor-pitch stuff.

I think I talked with Kesey about our

fucking strange situation.

The thing was weird, man,

but you couldn't be mad at him.

He was really compassionate.

I liked Sensuous,

and that was the most difficult part is,

having been lovers,

not being lovers anymore and continuing to be friends.

* I can't get you out of my mind **

The thing that creates problems

in all those husband-and-wife triangle situations

is everybody's hang-up with their own attachment

to some kind of belief of the way it ought to be.

When I came through Yellowstone Park with this bus,

I saw a sign that said,

"Beware of the Bear,"

and something clicked when I saw this and I thought,

"There's the problem.

"There's the whole hang-up that stops me from writing,

"stops people from singing, stops people from living.

"Beware of the Bear.

"What did that used to mean ?

"It used to mean be aware of the bear,

now it means be scared of it."

This little piece of knowledge,

you can plug it into any person

who is now being hassled with the way the world is changing.

Goldwater and his bunch are scared.

That extremism...

in the defense of liberty is no vice.

There's something happening that is scaring these people.

Which means that something is happening that is so new,

they're scared beyond any powers of reasoning.

Eight, nine...

Ten, nine, eight, seven,

six, five, four, three,

two, one, zero.

These are the stakes.

To make a world in which all of God's children can live

or to go into the dark.

We must either love each other

or we must die.

on November 3rd.nt Johnson

The stakes are too high for you to stay home.

All the themes of my work have to do with America,

traveling across this land,

coming to this edge and then what ?

Light membranes have passed into an oxygenation state.

After we got back to La Honda, after the bus trip,

we had a very purposeful ritual

to get out from under this bus thing.

We took all of our bus clothes

and put them in a pile and set fire to them,

because I wanted to be done with it,

I wanted to get back to business.

I had books to write and kids to raise.

But it wouldn't die.

People just kept coming around.

Like little jackrabbits gaily crossing

the pasture that morning, so--

What happened with us, we were making that movie

and pretty soon on Saturdays when we showed it,

people were coming to see what it was.

And the red barn and the kids on the beach

in the stream saying...

We really didn't project it until I'd finished editing it,

reel to reel, in chronological order.

And we showed it from beginning to end without stopping,

so 30 hours straight.

And so, for part of it,

everybody slept through it, of course.

Cassady, of course, he took speed, was awake

and was the one who ended up running the projector

and talking very softly,

"And now we're coming to New York."

Enjoying every second of it.

But he was the only one awake.

Absolutely everybody was asleep.

He's out of his nuts !

Every Saturday, they'd come around more and more,

because we would do these Saturday-night trips.

And finally, there were just too many coming around.

I realized, "I gotta get this out of my house

"because otherwise, then I'll be cleaning up all week long

for the rest of my life."

So we just said, "Okay, next time,

we're gonna do this in Santa Cruz at Babbs' house."

Which is really the beginning of the acid tests.

* Everywhere and all of the time *

* It's bending my mind *

And then, after that, he said, "I don't want it at my place."

He said, "Okay, next time we'll do it in San Jose."

So each time, we just said,

"Next week, on Saturday, it'll be happening there."

* I'm flying down deserted streets *

* Wrapped in mother's winding sheets *

* Asbestos boots on flaming feet *

* Dreaming of forbidden treats

* When uniforms on nighttime beats ask me *

When we started doing the acid test,

we took on the Dead as sort of our backup band.

* I can't come down

* It's plain to see

Kesey and the bus,

they'd been doing outrageous things for quite awhile,

and had a reputation for it.

And-- and for us, it seemed like a real interesting thing

to go and check out.

* Well someone's trying to tell me where it's at *

And they were our first and best audience,

the Pranksters were, you know.

They were the first ones to get off on us.

* Little wings like a vampire bat *

* I fly away to my cold water flat *

* And eat my way...

They weren't just playing what was on the music sheets,

they were playing what was in the air.

* I can't come down

* It's plain to see

* I can't come down

When the Dead are at their best,

the vibrations that are stirred up by the audience

is the music that they play.

That means that the band has to be supple enough

to really read the notes written on the wall.

* They say I've begun to lose my grip *

* My hold on reality's starting to slip *

* To tell me to get off of this trip *

* They say that it's like a sinking ship *

It moved on from that, exponentially,

from one place to another place.

* I can't come down

* It's plain to see

* I can't come down

* I've been set free *

LSD is a really groovy way to find out more about

the things around you.

LSD helps me understand the whole world better.

LSD helps you to understand your own mind.

Once Pandora's box is open,

you can't regulate who gets to use the stuff

that flies out of it.

by the problem of LSD.ghtened

I think there's been a great deal of misinformation

by those who seem to see no harm in it.

But as a parent and as a citizen

and certainly now in this position,

I am greatly concerned.

producing weirddrug capable of

and dangerous hallucinations

had found its way onto the streets.

We had to try and stop it.

The government said, "Stop that experiment.

"All these guinea pigs that we've sent up there

"into outer space, bring 'em back down,

"and don't ever let 'em go back up there again,

because we don't like the look in their eyes."

He's clean, Joe, except for these.

Sugar cubes.

Maybe your bookie's been dropping that acid

we've been hearing about.

Evil !

Evil, evil !

All right, come on, son.

Settle down.

Oh, no, no...

whether they want to or not,

are becoming expert in

the handling of LSD users in trouble.

You're gonna be all right.

I want to get--

Some people have a bad experience the first time

they take the drug.

Others take it 30, 60, or even 100 times

before their bad trip.

And the bad trip: instant insanity.

Often, a Never Never Land of no return.

No, no, get away !

Some others who take LSD

will have even more tragic freak-outs.

Many lose all contact with reality.

Some forget what height means

and in a turned-on or euphoric state,

step or attempt to fly from cliffs and high windows,

with real-life,

permanent non-psychedelic results.

Other trippers attempt to merge

their beings with large, fast automobiles.

With all the hype about LSD,

you were busted with marijuana ?

It wasn't even grass charges,

it was being in a place where marijuana was.

Mr. Kesey, do you feel like you did something wrong ?

I feel like you only come to this movie once

and if you don't get something rewarding

out of every minute you're sitting there,

then you're blowing your ticket.

Let's assume the worst.

Supposing they do come back with a conviction,

would you appeal ?

Well, if I could just concede in some way

and let them stick me in jail

and do my time, I would do it and save the taxpayers

and everybody else a lot of trouble.

The aim of the sheriff and the probation department

has been to rehabilitate Mr. Kesey,

to get him back into writing,

back into the career where he seems to have the most talent.

* Walk me out in the morning dew *

* My honey

In six months, your kids grow a lot.

That's what they take away from you in jail.

It's a drag, I don't wanna ever go to jail.

* You didn't hear no baby *

* Cry today *

One flew out of a cuckoo's nest today,

that is if you consider jail a cuckoo's nest.

Federal charges were dropped and the last obstacle,

San Francisco bail, was set at $3,500 plus penalties.

Kesey will be back in court November 9th, hopefully.

In the meantime, he will tell the teenage world

of the evils of drugs

and probably describe a long trip.

Are you repudiating LSD and other hallucinatory drugs ?

There's enough LSD around now

and enough young kids around

who are able to manufacture this,

that it's impossible

for the police to do anything about it.

You think this new law is turning them off then ?

I don't know that you can turn them off

but I think you may be able to move them on.

Do you consider yourself

becoming one of us squares perhaps ?

God, I hope not.

The commencement exercises for LSD U

will be held on Monday night,

that's Halloween.

And, of course, the man who is going to be

passing out the diplomas is Ken Kesey.

Ken, what's the theme of this commencement exercise ?

Trip or treat.

When I first proposed the idea to Jerry Garcia,

the leader of the Grateful Dead,

who's playing up there now,

that it's time to graduate from acid,

he says, "Hallelujah."

It was a test and there were people that passed

and were people that didn't pass.

We gave out diplomas for people

that we felt like really had passed it.

Are you a member of the graduating class tonight ?

No, I flunked the acid test.

How do you go about doing that ?

Well, the stipulations that Ken put up, I didn't pass.

We went wild for awhile.

We went wild because we'd been caged up for 50,000 years.

We went wild and found out

there was more than we had been led to believe.

And now, unless we start finding the little piece of it

that we call the reins,

it's gonna get away from us.

This doesn't necessarily mean you stop taking acid,

but you stop repeating the trips.

Every head knows that he takes a drug

to eventually stop taking it,

and I think that it's time for a great number of them to stop.

I believe that drugs have now become a fashion.

The Haight scene has changed all right.

The flower not only has wilted, it's dead.

* Going to leave

* This brokedown palace

* On my hands and my knees *

* I will roll, roll, roll

The hippies is often a strange world

in which they live in.

They take many trips.

And the trip of a hippie is generally an unusual one.

And marijuana, of course, with LSD, is being used.

All of these drugs were being fed into the culture by the CIA.

The LSD was not the whole story.

I didn't believe it for a long time while Allen Ginsberg says,

"You know who was paying for that was the CIA."

I said, "Oh no, Allen, you're just paranoid."

But he finally got all the records and it did turn out

the CIA was doing this and it wasn't being done

to try to cure insane people,

which is what we thought.

It was being done to weaken people

and to be able to put them under the control of interrogators.

I was so naive.

I believed these doctors knew what they were doing.

You know, this is the American government.

How could they make a mistake ?

* Fare you well

* Fare you well

* I love you more than words can tell *

* Listen to the river

* Sing sweet songs to rock my soul *

* Doo-doo-doo

* Doo-doo-doo-doo *

We finally got out of jail.

We were perfectly willing to leave

that whole area down there,

which offered excitement but no stability.

It's funny, in your Prankster days,

you were seen as being part of a group

that had made such a break with the past,

and yet here you are living on a family farm,

you're, I believe, still married to the woman

who you've been married to since, what is it, 1956 ?

Long time, yeah.

Yeah, so, I mean, there's been this

incredible continuity in your life

between past and present in a lot of ways.

Yeah.

My wife and I met in junior high

and all of our families are still very close.

This schism between this one consciousness

and this consciousness,

I believe, has been arbitrarily forced on us.

I've always been a fairly reliable,

"straight up the middle of the road" citizen

that just happens to be an acidhead.

Ken's a born leader.

I mean, he's got just charisma coming out of his ears.

Cassady was not that kind of person.

He really wasn't.

Once he didn't have the bus to drive,

or a function, he was--

he was really like a liability.

You've heard the stories about him and Anne Murphy.

Oh, don't you know this ?

Oh, God.

They were on a heavy, sado-masochist trip.

I'm really old-fashioned when it comes to stuff like that.

I don't think a relationship is

worth jack shit if you're not making things good and happy.

Compare this with Ken and Faye.

They've been good for each other.

See, they-- they take care of each other.

They don't let each other just go downhill

and get more and more fucked up.

On the contrary, they take good care of each other.

Were you surprised to learn that Cassady was found dead

beside the railroad tracks in Mexico ?

When he died, I felt like that he'd accidentally

killed himself on purpose.

I can picture myself in his shoes exactly

and there's no place else to go, really.

Might as well meet the angels.

At what point did you decide to give up

the kind of Pranksters life ?

The story that I've heard is

the Pranksters went to Woodstock,

you didn't want to go.

And when they came back,

they came back to a sign hung in your driveway

that just said, "No."

Well, there was 61 people when they headed out to Woodstock

and after they were gone,

I went upstairs, and we live in a barn--

at that time there was still hay in the loft of the barn,

and I found one of these little hippie warrens,

where they dug in with their ratty old sleeping bags

and their copy of Zap magazine

and stuck right down in the hay bale, was a candle

which had burned right down to the hay

before it'd gone off

and I thought, "There's certain things that

take precedent over enlightenment."

And that's when you sent everybody home basically.

Yeah.

How much writing have you been doing

over the past few years ?

Oh, quite a lot, I write all the time.

I just don't publish that much.

I've got four kids

and there's this-- there's a lot of the same energy

that goes into raising a family

that goes into putting a book together like "Notion."

Which, once you get a lot of stuff in the air,

you can't stop because you'll forget it,

and that kind of consciousness,

I have not had and I think it's because...

you know, I'm running a big farm.

That's what occupies my mind.

Either that or I fried my marbles,

just like everybody thinks.

When people ask me what I think my best work is,

I always say the bus.

Novels are a dime a dozen,

but there's only one bus Further.

What it meant

was that everybody had to consider a new way

for things to be.

Don't you know that we're all one ?

The deeper I got into it,

the more I realized it was a different force working.

The only big mistake we ever made, as a force,

was thinking for awhile that we were going to win.

We developed vested interests

in the victory to come.

We begin to parcel off into little groups,

whether it's feminism,

or politics, for money, religion,

whatever it is everybody is jumping up and down

in front of it

until nobody can see it clear anymore.

Now, if we'd never made that mistake,

we'd been way ahead,

and this is kind of why I'm retiring from the ranks.

There's something about what we're doing is that

we're meant to lose, every time.

You make these forays, you write these books

and you perform this music,

but the big juggernaut of civilization continues

and you get kind of brushed to the side.

But I think all through history

there's been these kind of divine losers

that just take a deep breath and go ahead,

knowing that society's not going to understand it,

not even caring, 'cause they're having a good time.

* Sometimes the lights all shinin' on me *

* Other times I can barely see *

* Lately it occurs to me

* What a long strange trip it's been *

* Truckin'

* Got my chips cashed in *

* Keep truckin'

* Like the doo-dah man

* Together

* More or less in line *

* Just keep truckin' on

* Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on Main Street *

* Chicago New York Detroit and it's all on the same street *

* Your typical city involved in a typical daydream *

* Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings *

* Dallas

* Got a soft machine

* Houston

* Too close to New Orleans *

* New York's

* Got the ways and means *

* That just won't let you be *

* Most of the cats that you meet on the streets *

* Speak of true love

* Most of the time they're sittin' and cryin' at home *

* One of these days they know they gotta get going *

* Out of the door and down on the street all alone *

* Truckin'

* Like the doo-dah man

* Once told me

* You've got to play your hand... **