Motley mourners bid Kesey farewell

Furthur education: Kesey with the original magic bus

Mourners dressed in colourful hippy outfits have laid to rest the US novelist Ken Kesey, famed for writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, who died last week.

A multimedia memorial service at a theatre in the town of Eugene, Oregon, included a taped benediction from rock band the Grateful Dead, who are Kesey associates of long standing.

The counter-cultural icon himself lay outside the theatre in a coffin in the latest version of Furthur, the bus he famously took on an LSD-fuelled journey across the USA in 1964.

Kesey, who had undergone cancer surgery, was buried on nearby farm, next to his son, Jed, who died in a road accident in 1984.

Eulogy

About 1,000 people packed the McDonald theatre in the town to say farewell to one of the father figures of the hippy movement.

Kesey's coffin, in the psychedelically painted bus, was paisley coloured, draped in gold lamé and bathed in purple light.

Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs with the bus Furthur

Mourners watched a video tribute and listened to music from one of his many plays.

Neighbour and friend Ken Babbs delivered a lengthy eulogy - entitled Let's Make This Short.

Babbs was one of the original self-styled Merry Pranksters - Kesey's companions on his 1964 journey from San Francisco to New York.

"We came of age in the time of Sputnik, but we were the astronauts of inner space," Babbs declared.

"We are now, and always have been, the minority - but we will save the world.

"That was Kesey's goal - to save the world."

We were the astronauts of inner space

Merry Prankster Ken Babbs

Kesey found success at the age of 27 when he wrote Cuckoo's Nest, his first novel, which was later made into an Oscar-winning film starring Jack Nicholson.

It tells the story of McMurphy, a rebellious inmate in a mental hospital who leads a rebellion against the repressive staff.

Authority eventually wins - McMurphy is lobotomised.

The book, published in 1962, was an instant bestseller and was championed by those who embraced the nascent counter-culture.

Kesey's next novel, Sometimes a Great Notion - an attempt to write a work in the grand American tradition - met with less success, but was also turned into a film, this time starring Henry Fonda and Paul Newman.

However, Kesey was to become at least as famous for his drug-inspired exploits as he was for his writing.

The most famous of these, the Pranksters' 1964 trip, revealed Kesey as a bridge between the older beat generation and the new counter-culture.

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The bus, Furthur, was driven by Neal Cassady, the real-life inspiration for Jack Kerouac's beat novel On The Road.

The Pranksters set off with supplies of LSD - which was legal at the time - and the journey was interrupted by frequent "happenings".

Kesey's adventures were later chronicled by New Journalism luminary Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

The author was jailed in 1967 for six months for possession of marijuana.

He then retreated to his farm and family in Oregon, where he continued to write.