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Cronies, A Burlesque: Adventures with Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, the Merry Pranksters and the Grateful Dead
A bullet train of a book, fast-paced, hilarious, rich with action. A harbinger of good things to come in mysterious ways.
It all began at a cocktail party at Wallace Stegner’s for the Stanford writing class of 1958. Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs became cronies, embarking on a frolicking, rambunctious adventure that lasted over 40 years. Babbs calls the 70 stories of this book “burlesques” because, after 85 years of living, much of it in the wide friendly center of an evolving, at times psychedelic culture, memory no longer can, or even should include an exact retelling, but only a tasty sprinkling of the truth, mixed with an endless enigma, all topped with the best of humor and heart.
The troupe of characters include the Kens Kesey and Babbs, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Timothy Leary, Jerry Garcia, Pigpen, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mountain Girl, Sonny Barger, Larry McMurtry, Wavy Gravy, Hunter S. Thompson, Kirk Douglas, Paul Newman, Jan Kerouac, Bill Walton, Wendell Berry, a pick-up bed-sized sturgeon, and always the many free-spirited, creative, friendly men and women who made up the Merry Band of Pranksters.
Come along for the ride on the famous bus trip to Manhattan. Join the Hells Angels at their partying best. Drop in for the early Acid Tests. Experience the Berkeley Vietnam anti-war rally. Relish the stories of Kesey’s pot busts and “suicide.” Climb aboard—“Board!”—for six months on the lam in Mexico. Take the Further tours with the Grateful Dead. Make the ultimate move to Oregon, where Babbs and Kesey grew a magical friendship and collaboration until Kesey passed in 2001.
Irreverent, unencumbered by social norms, literary and poetic, Cronies is a poignant view of the Sixties and beyond from someone who was there, and remembers it well. Kind of…
It all began at a cocktail party at Wallace Stegner’s for the Stanford writing class of 1958. Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs became cronies, embarking on a frolicking, rambunctious adventure that lasted over 40 years. Babbs calls the 70 stories of this book “burlesques” because, after 85 years of living, much of it in the wide friendly center of an evolving, at times psychedelic culture, memory no longer can, or even should include an exact retelling, but only a tasty sprinkling of the truth, mixed with an endless enigma, all topped with the best of humor and heart.
The troupe of characters include the Kens Kesey and Babbs, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Timothy Leary, Jerry Garcia, Pigpen, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mountain Girl, Sonny Barger, Larry McMurtry, Wavy Gravy, Hunter S. Thompson, Kirk Douglas, Paul Newman, Jan Kerouac, Bill Walton, Wendell Berry, a pick-up bed-sized sturgeon, and always the many free-spirited, creative, friendly men and women who made up the Merry Band of Pranksters.
Come along for the ride on the famous bus trip to Manhattan. Join the Hells Angels at their partying best. Drop in for the early Acid Tests. Experience the Berkeley Vietnam anti-war rally. Relish the stories of Kesey’s pot busts and “suicide.” Climb aboard—“Board!”—for six months on the lam in Mexico. Take the Further tours with the Grateful Dead. Make the ultimate move to Oregon, where Babbs and Kesey grew a magical friendship and collaboration until Kesey passed in 2001.
Irreverent, unencumbered by social norms, literary and poetic, Cronies is a poignant view of the Sixties and beyond from someone who was there, and remembers it well. Kind of…
572 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 11, 2022
47 people are currently reading
133 people want to read
About the author
Ken Babbs
11 books12 followersKen Babbs attended Stanford University and is the last member of the legendary Wallace Stegner Stanford writing class (Ken Kesey, Wendell Berry, Ernest Gaines, Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone) to write a novel. Babbs served in the USMC from 1959 to 1964, and was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. A famous Merry Prankster who became one of the psychedelic leaders of the 1960s, he, along with best friend and Prankster leader, Ken Kesey, wrote Last Go Round (1994) about the oldest and largest rodeos in America. He lives in Dexter, Oregon and is the founder of the Sky Pilot Club."
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
January 25, 2022
If you want to know where all the cool stuff came from in this world read this book and find out.
September 6, 2025
Was craving a bit more narrative thrust, so didn't get far with this fragmented, hallucinated memoir / biography / anecdotal memory-fest.
Unfair to rate a book I haven't read, but I decided to pick 3 stars, right in the middle. Fans of Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, and so on, may find these short chapters endearing, and the trip enduring, and the insights blurring, and now I've lost the train, but the road unwinds, random activities unfold, someone steps on a guitar and breaks it. Green footprints on the roof of the bus, Kesey wears a blindfold when he paints the sides. There is more like this, much more, and sometimes even less much less. There is journeying and travelling and even reaching a destination before racing off again.
The orange sun disappears below the horizon, films are made with no plan, no script, and someone decides later if a transcript is warranted but that it a lot of work. Typewriters are a burden except when speed-writing. Ginsberg arrives but I didn't get that far.
Unfair to rate a book I haven't read, but I decided to pick 3 stars, right in the middle. Fans of Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, and so on, may find these short chapters endearing, and the trip enduring, and the insights blurring, and now I've lost the train, but the road unwinds, random activities unfold, someone steps on a guitar and breaks it. Green footprints on the roof of the bus, Kesey wears a blindfold when he paints the sides. There is more like this, much more, and sometimes even less much less. There is journeying and travelling and even reaching a destination before racing off again.
The orange sun disappears below the horizon, films are made with no plan, no script, and someone decides later if a transcript is warranted but that it a lot of work. Typewriters are a burden except when speed-writing. Ginsberg arrives but I didn't get that far.
February 7, 2022
Cronies
Totally enjoyed this book. Having heard Ken Babbs monologue on the Grateful Dead DVD from the 1972 Veneta Oregon concert, I needed to know more. Also having read The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, I needed to know more. This filled in a lot of fascinating details of the mythic characters whose adventures i have come to admire. Well done!
Totally enjoyed this book. Having heard Ken Babbs monologue on the Grateful Dead DVD from the 1972 Veneta Oregon concert, I needed to know more. Also having read The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, I needed to know more. This filled in a lot of fascinating details of the mythic characters whose adventures i have come to admire. Well done!
June 3, 2022
Cronies tells of so many memorable events. Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs getting to know each other at Wallace Stegner's famed writing program, the Bay area scene of the sixties, mediating between Hell's Angels and Vietnam war protestors, the origins of the Grateful Dead, Neal Cassidy bridging the Beat Generation(Cassidy was Sal in Kerouac's On the Road) and the Hippie generation of Kesey, a rendition of the bus trip from the Bay Area to New York famously chronicled in Electric Cool Aid Test, Kesey's fake suicide and subsequent flight to Mexico to avoid drug charges, and Babbs' trip to Woodstock. There are so many cameo appearances by the likes of Led Zeppelin, Larry McMurtrey, Hunter Thompson, and Timothy Leary.
But this is not the book to read if you're looking for a candid appraisal of those experiences. It's more of a travelogue of two friends that avoids uncomfortable subjects such as Kesey's relationships with women while married to his wife, some of them in front of his wife, Kesey's withdrawal from the drug scene after his jail sentences, the effects of LSD, the violence of the Hell's Angels. And there are many chapters that simply repeat dialogue from those adventures that were meant to be funny, ironic, smart alec, that wear then.
It is an interesting read, but could have been so much more
But this is not the book to read if you're looking for a candid appraisal of those experiences. It's more of a travelogue of two friends that avoids uncomfortable subjects such as Kesey's relationships with women while married to his wife, some of them in front of his wife, Kesey's withdrawal from the drug scene after his jail sentences, the effects of LSD, the violence of the Hell's Angels. And there are many chapters that simply repeat dialogue from those adventures that were meant to be funny, ironic, smart alec, that wear then.
It is an interesting read, but could have been so much more
April 14, 2022
Ken Babbs worked diligently to write and publish this rollicking but poignant tribute to his great friend, Ken Kesey. Anyone with an interest in Kesey’s art, the Pranksters, Grateful Dead, or counter cultural history will enjoy this book.
March 25, 2022
A beautiful retelling of antics and shenanigans with a multitude of peers over the years. Layered with love and affection, this book serves also as an elegy to the inimitable Ken Kesey. If you are familiar with the Merry Pranksters, or want to learn more, this is a must read.
February 27, 2025
This book was a hoot, lots of fun, amusing and (I assume) honest in spirit about the milieu of the Merry Pranksters. Babbs refers to the book as a “burlesque”, a definition of which he includes at the very beginning of the book: “A historical accounting with additions, exaggerations, embellishments, and inventions.” Clearly not everything in the book unfolded exactly as narrated (for example, someone puts “Shakedown Street”, a song not played until 1978, in the tape deck on the way to Woodstock in 1969), but Babbs does a wonderful job of weaving the truth and the embellishments of the weird and the crazy believable.
I’m not sure this book would be as enjoyable for folks not already familiar with the Prankster and related psychedelic legends, but for those who are familiar, I think they’d find this book a very cool rush of bohemian adventure and colorful characters.
I bought this book after hearing a great interview with Babbs on the “Comes A Time” podcast, and read it in preparation for a book discussion on Zoom with the “So Many Reads” Grateful Dead book club.
I’m not sure this book would be as enjoyable for folks not already familiar with the Prankster and related psychedelic legends, but for those who are familiar, I think they’d find this book a very cool rush of bohemian adventure and colorful characters.
I bought this book after hearing a great interview with Babbs on the “Comes A Time” podcast, and read it in preparation for a book discussion on Zoom with the “So Many Reads” Grateful Dead book club.
April 18, 2023
This was a fun read and I think any of you with some familiarity with the Merry Prankster scene will enjoy the view from inside.
Babbs has the tapes, the videos, and was there for just about every story that is told in this book. You can be sure that he embellished this burlesque but you can also be pretty sure that a lot of the dialogue is off the tapes and that he is describing some scenes from the videos. And, yes, a lot is probably tempered by memory and editing.
Each chapter is preceded by a quote from on of the protagonists, for example, this from Kesey:
"I get weary of people who use pessimism to avoid being responsible for all the problems in our culture. A man who says "we're on the road to disaster" is seldom trying to wrench the wheel away from the driver." Ken Kesey, page 177
There are 70 short acts in this telling and there is always "another big day on tap."
Babbs has the tapes, the videos, and was there for just about every story that is told in this book. You can be sure that he embellished this burlesque but you can also be pretty sure that a lot of the dialogue is off the tapes and that he is describing some scenes from the videos. And, yes, a lot is probably tempered by memory and editing.
Each chapter is preceded by a quote from on of the protagonists, for example, this from Kesey:
"I get weary of people who use pessimism to avoid being responsible for all the problems in our culture. A man who says "we're on the road to disaster" is seldom trying to wrench the wheel away from the driver." Ken Kesey, page 177
There are 70 short acts in this telling and there is always "another big day on tap."
January 6, 2023
An entertaining romp through the heyday of Merry Prankster escapades, including road trips on the Furthur bus with Neal Cassady, California acid tests with the Grateful Dead, caravanning to and participating in Woodstock, endlessly eluding and outwitting the police, hiding out from the law in Mexico, and much, much more.
Babbs captures the zeitgeist of the times— the drug-fueled, artistic counterculture— all the while celebrating his close friendship with and admiration for Ken Kesey. Some of the stories are so hilariously absurd and outrageous that I frequently laughed out loud.
Babbs captures the zeitgeist of the times— the drug-fueled, artistic counterculture— all the while celebrating his close friendship with and admiration for Ken Kesey. Some of the stories are so hilariously absurd and outrageous that I frequently laughed out loud.
September 25, 2025
A very enjoyable read on all things Ken: Kesey, Babbs, Merry Pranksters, Grateful Dead, the trip in Further to NYC in 1964, Neal Cassady, and all the other stories you may have heard over the years and decades. I strongly recommend this book to fans of the Kens, and especially if you were in Eugene, or anywhere on the West Coast, in the 1960s-1980s.
October 29, 2022
fun stories and intensely written. Reading about the Creamery fundraiser show inspired me to go listen to the 8/27/72 Veneta show - that's what this book was like. New perspective and angles on some familiar stories and characters. Fun. Quite rushed in the last few decades!
November 23, 2022
Cronies is part tall tale, a memoir, and a song of brotherly love and camaraderie. It’s about a time when art and music meshed with acid in search of an ecstatic revival of the human spirit lost in the cloud of atomic war.
http://stillhomeron.blogspot.com/2021...
http://stillhomeron.blogspot.com/2021...
May 5, 2022
Sparks fly upward. This book is good, righteous fun.
January 6, 2023
As an avid fan of all things Merry Pranksterish, it was with great pleasure I read Ken Babbs' account of his time with Ken Kesey, spanning the decades.
A great read and totally a fun ride.
A great read and totally a fun ride.
August 11, 2023
Fun read, skips through some details, an honor to Ken.
June 11, 2024
fills in a lot of gaps
The candle is worth the game. Direct testimony from a survivor of a most unusual period in American history. Thanks Ken.
The candle is worth the game. Direct testimony from a survivor of a most unusual period in American history. Thanks Ken.
September 12, 2025
Whats not to L❤️VE!!!
Job 5:7
Job 5:7
April 16, 2024
Cronies: Adventures with Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, The Merry Pranksters, and the Grateful Dead is an autobiographical account by Ken Babbs, one of the founding members of “The Merry Pranksters.” He takes the reader on a journey that spans over forty years, from first meeting Kesey at Stanford in 1958 to Kesey’s memorial in 2001. This book is a shrine to Ken Kesey and Neil Cassady, and to a world they wanted to create. Babbs recounts the stories of Neil Cassady joining the trip to New York aboard the legendary bus, Furthur. He tells of the “Acid Tests” and the Grateful Dead. Throughout his journeys with Kesey, they interact with many counter-culture icons, from the Beats Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to psychedelic advocate Dr. Timothy Leary and even the Hells Angels.
I was in high school when I first read about the adventures of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. A few years later I was on the road myself, following the Grateful Dead and traveling to music festivals. Getting to these shows anyway possible, at some point the conversations always went to “Did you know what Ken Kesey use to say?” or “Did you hear the story about Neil Cassady?” We were following in the footsteps of the “Merry Pranksters.”
Babbs has given us a highly entertaining memoir. With Cassady in the driver’s seat, on-the-road excitement filled the pages, along with unusual adventures and the antics that only a “Prankster” could come up with. Babbs tells his own story of the mad-capped mayhem in their journey.
This book is for anyone who has followed the Grateful Dead. It is for anyone who has road-tripped to a music festival, or another festival; those who have piled into a car, a truck, or a van with a bunch of cronies and headed into the woods to camp. Or for the those who needed to do the solo trip. This book is for anyone who has read Kerouac’s On the Road, dreamt of leaving it all behind, getting with close friends, and venturing forth into the unknown. It’s an enlightening, adventure-filled book for the inner prankster in us all.
It’s an important read for this day and age, as we continue to struggle with the global pandemic and other social crises. Too many people want to get back to “normal,” whatever that means. Babbs offers accounts of fun and chaos, while also highlighting important issues of the day. There’s an opportunity to go forth, make a difference, and define joy however you want.
This review was originally published at https://sanfranciscobookreview.com/pr...
I was in high school when I first read about the adventures of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. A few years later I was on the road myself, following the Grateful Dead and traveling to music festivals. Getting to these shows anyway possible, at some point the conversations always went to “Did you know what Ken Kesey use to say?” or “Did you hear the story about Neil Cassady?” We were following in the footsteps of the “Merry Pranksters.”
Babbs has given us a highly entertaining memoir. With Cassady in the driver’s seat, on-the-road excitement filled the pages, along with unusual adventures and the antics that only a “Prankster” could come up with. Babbs tells his own story of the mad-capped mayhem in their journey.
This book is for anyone who has followed the Grateful Dead. It is for anyone who has road-tripped to a music festival, or another festival; those who have piled into a car, a truck, or a van with a bunch of cronies and headed into the woods to camp. Or for the those who needed to do the solo trip. This book is for anyone who has read Kerouac’s On the Road, dreamt of leaving it all behind, getting with close friends, and venturing forth into the unknown. It’s an enlightening, adventure-filled book for the inner prankster in us all.
It’s an important read for this day and age, as we continue to struggle with the global pandemic and other social crises. Too many people want to get back to “normal,” whatever that means. Babbs offers accounts of fun and chaos, while also highlighting important issues of the day. There’s an opportunity to go forth, make a difference, and define joy however you want.
This review was originally published at https://sanfranciscobookreview.com/pr...
August 3, 2022
Babbs was the companion and fellow "pranking-conspirator" of Ken Kesey, and recounts his (and their) adventures with their Merry Prankster fellows and all the whoopers and doop-de-dooers, which have been so well documented elsewhere, but in this book Babbs manages to portray Neal Cassidy, the bridge between the Beatniks and the Freaks, in a better light than many, as a dynamic intellectual caught in a spiritual quandary... there's way more to it, but that''s just all I can say for the moment. Other than that, many of the "Grateful Dead songs" he quotes are a matter of 'artistic license' and not their catalog, but hey, it's the feeling, and the thought, that counts, in this case.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews