Furthur
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Further was a 1939 International Harvester school bus purchased by author Ken Kesey in 1964, for $1,500 from Andre Hobson in Atherton, California. The bus was stripped down and remodeled inside and out for a psychedelic excursion across the country with Kesey and his Merry Pranksters on board. The bus was named by artist Roy Sebern who painted the word “Furthur” on the destination placard as a kind of one-word poem and inspiration to keep going whenever the bus broke down. It wasn’t until much later that he found out he had misspelled it. Just as the bus was constantly being repainted, somewhere along the line the Further sign was corrected.
Beat legend Neal Cassady was the driver of the famous bus on its original trip to New York for the opening of Kesey's new book, Sometimes a Great Notion. The trip was filmed by the Merry Pranksters. Other Furthur trips included an anti-Vietnam war rally in 1966 and Woodstock in 1969 (without Kesey). More can be read about the adventures of the Merry Pranksters on Further in Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.
The Smithsonian Institution sought to acquire the bus, but Kesey refused to give or sell it to them. In true form, Kesey attempted to prank the venerable Smithsonian by passing off a phony bus. They didn't fall for it.
Ken Kesey parked the bus in a swamp on his farm in 1990 when he acquired a new bus.
In November 2005, Furthur was pulled out of the swamp by Zane Kesey and a group of the original Merry Pranksters with the intent of restoring it. The estimate was around $100,000 would be needed to fix the badly rusted body, re-do the interior, restore the flooded drivetrain, and repaint the famous exterior. However according to key-z.com, Zane Kesey's site, the project is stalled and looking for a new group of volunteers to take it over.
Both buses currently reside at Kesey's farm (where his widow still lives) in Pleasant Hill, Oregon.
The two top photos are of the bus built by Kesey and the Pranksters in 1999.
[edit] In popular culture
In the Codemonkey's episode story of 420 the bus makes an appearance but is called farther.
The bus is mentioned in the song "The Other One" by the Grateful Dead, "the bus came by and I got on, that's when it all began...there was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land."
An allusion to the bus appears in the Steely Dan song "Kid Charlemagne", where it is referred to as a "Technicolor motor home".
The bus, along with the Acid Tests performed by its occupants, was featured in the 2007 movie Across the Universe. Though accurate in detail, it was a Blue Bird school bus, rather than an International Harvester, its name being "Beyond".
Even Furthur was an electronic music festival near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It's famous for hosting the first ever USA appearance of Daft Punk, where they performed a combination DJ and Live PA set.
[edit] External links
- FurthurNET (legal bit-torrent for live music)
- Merry Prankster history page
- Archives on Furthur with film footage from trips available for sale
- History at the NoFurthur site
- Seattle Times article on Furthur's restoration
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