When Tom Wolfe wrote The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test 30 years ago, he was documenting the birth of the counter-culture movement, a psychedelic supernova which exploded in the minds of American youth in the 1960s. Ken Kesey was the book's central character, an author-turned-acid-guru who led his Merry Pranksters on an intrepid bus-trip around the universe inside the head, using LSD as rocket fuel.
Kesey, the author of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion, is seen as the instigator of acid culture, the man who bridged the gap between the Beat Generation and the Flower Children. But, as he says himself: "Just because you surf the wave doesn't mean you created it."
Ken Kesey is a lucid, charismatic speaker, and if his stars 'n' stripes waistcoat didn't grab you, his deep, rumbling Oregon drawl would surely snap you to attention. Kesey read from one of his own essays, telling the story of when The Merry Pranksters met The Beatles, and his rich, impressionistic style brought the tale to life, giving colour and shape to a long-distant event.
While Kesey cut a commanding figure in his wizard's top hat, his original Merry Pranksters cohort, Ken Babbs, appeared shrunken in stature despite his middle-age spread, and as he sipped his red wine and told inane anecdotes about life on the bus he came across like a man whose insight had stalled somewhere along a 1960s back road.
Kesey returned to the stage to tell a children's story, improvising as he went along, and turning the audience into wide-eyed kids with his booming delivery. Babbs and Kesey then led the crowd in a chorus of The Beatles' Your Majesty, before leaving the stage for a lengthy autograph-signing session. It wasn't much cop for nine quid, but it was worth it for one hallucinatory glimpse behind the doors of perception.
