I was in high school when The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was published in 1968. However, I didn’t read it until the mid-’70s—but I definitely remember the impact it had.
We were on a family vacation in 1970. Every time we pulled into a rest stop on the interstate, scores of garishly painted vehicles dotted the parking lot, invariably emblazoned with psychedelic doodlings.
Everyone who drove in those cars and vans that summer—a VW minibus was the status ride—had read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and everyone wanted to emulate the adventures of the Merry Pranksters, as chronicled by author Tom Wolfe.
The multicolored Merry Pranksters’ modified 1939 International Harvester school bus, nicknamed “Further,” gleams in front of the Harriet Street warehouse after a thorough repainting before the Acid Test Graduation. Purchased in 1964 for $1500, the bus was first used to ferry the Pranksters across the country to the New York World’s Fair. San Francisco, 1966. (Photo Courtesy of TASCHEN)
Who were the Pranksters? A band of untamed spirits led by the late Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion), they traveled across America in a wildly painted bus named “Furthur,” dropping LSD prolifically in an unstructured but highly motivated quest for transcendence. Their journey, which Wolfe observed firsthand, arguably spawned the hippie movement. In fact, The New York Times called Acid Test the “essential” book on hippies.
My dad, a former captain in the US Marine Corps, was appalled by the jamboree of freaks taking a break from the road around us, with their long hair, beards, beads and costumes of every imaginable design. “What is happening to this country?” he wondered.
Well, Dad, whatever it was, it happened. But ironically, the hippie movement—which was followed by Watergate, Reagan’s War on Drugs, AIDS, 9/11, the Great Recession and the rise of the billionaire politician/asshole—turned out to be a high point for America. Of course, it hasn’t been all bad since then, though it may seem that way at times.
The Acid Test Graduation, Halloween night, 1966, held at the Merry Pranksters’ warehouse/headquarters on Harriet Street in San Francisco’s Skid Row area. All eyes are on Ken Kesey (spotlight shining on his bare back) as he pulls off his biggest prank of all: graduating from acid. (Photo Courtesy of TACSHEN)
Thankfully, the passing of years hasn’t diminished the impact of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. For those who have dropped acid—or are contemplating a trip—the book is staggeringly accurate about the experience. But the pure, unadulterated freedom that the Merry Pranksters practiced is the real hook. Kesey and company’s explorations and revelations electrified a generation nearly a half-century ago—and they can still have the same effect today.
Now a beautiful new limited collectors’ edition, signed by Tom Wolfe, has just been released by Taschen Books. Published in traditional letterpress, it includes facsimile reproductions of Wolfe’s manuscript pages, as well as Ken Kesey’s jailhouse journals, handbills and underground magazines of the period.
Interweaving the prose and ephemera are photographic essays by Lawrence Schiller, whose coverage of the acid scene for Life magazine helped inspire Wolfe to write his story, and Ted Streshinsky, who accompanied Wolfe while reporting for the New York Herald Tribune.
“Hollywood Acid Test,” February 25, 1966. The psychedelic movement was the invention of the acid test events, where live music, movies, “audioptics” and the “stroboscopic ballet machine” were standard features. The costumed revelers dancing into the small hours of the night endures as one of Schiller’s most iconic images from his coverage of the LSD scene and was featured in the best selling book ‘LSD’ (1966) as well as on the cover of the Capitol Records LP of the same name and year. This photograph is available as a numbered and signed print in an Art Edition of ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.’ (Photo Courtesy of TACSHEN)
These photographs—together with those of poet Allen Ginsberg and other photographers who covered the scene—paint a vivid picture of the countercultural world that Wolfe’s book chronicles: acid parties near “Capsule Corner” in Hollywood; the hippie-filled streets of Haight-Ashbury; the abandoned pie factory that the Pranksters called home; and the infamous Acid Tests, Kool-Aid and all.
Will you take the Acid Test? Even if you don’t, this reading experience is totally psychedelic!
- The Hollywood Acid Test was held at midnight on February 25, 1966, in a small film studio near the Sunset Strip, just down the block from photographer Lawrence Schiller's studio. The addition of dry ice to the LSD-spiked Kool-Aid was an effect that Kesey used as early as 1960. (Photo Courtesy of TASCHEN)
- A first-timer in the throes of a bad trip. "I experienced the desire to die, but not actual death," she later said, "very strongly desire to rip my skin off and pull my hair out and pull my face off." as the first national photojournalist to capture the American acid scene from inside, Lawrence Schiller began with a single contact in Berkeley, California, and built a large network of young, receptive subjects who allowed him to document their private experiences with LSD. Hollywood, 1966. (Photo Courtesy of TASCHEN)
- Tom Wolfe with Jerry Garcia and Grateful Dead manager Rock Scully, at the corner of Haight and Ashbury, San Francisco, 1966. Wolfe arrived from New York to start work on the story in October of the year. (Photo Courtesy of TASCHEN)
- 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, published at the dawn of the hippie era, inspired psychonauts around the world. now it's available again—bigger, better and trippier than ever! (Photo Courtesy of TASCHEN)
- The Acid Test Graduation, Halloween night, 1966, held at the Merry Pranksters' warehouse/headquarters on Harriet Street in San Francisco's Skid Row area. All eyes are on Ken Kesey (spotlight shining on his bare back) as he pulls off his biggest prank of all: graduating from acid. (Photo Courtesy of TACSHEN)
- "Hollywood Acid Test," February 25, 1966. The psychedelic movement was the invention of the acid test events, where live music, movies, "audioptics" and the "stroboscopic ballet machine" were standard features. The costumed revelers dancing into the small hours of the night endures as one of Schiller's most iconic images from his coverage of the LSD scene and was featured in the best selling book 'LSD' (1966) as well as on the cover of the Capitol Records LP of the same name and year. This photograph is available as a numbered and signed print in an Art Edition of 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.' (Photo Courtesy of TACSHEN)
Go to taschen.com to purchase the book. Only 1,768 numbered copies available.
Related: 11 Psychedelic Gifts for Your Hippie Friends
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by Samantha Nicholas at High Times
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