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KEN KESEY
© Marc Wickert
www.knucklepit.com
photos © Zane Kesey
www.key-z.com When people hear the name Ken Kesey, they tend to associate it with one of three main people. There’s the author of some amazing classic novels; the leader of the Merry Pranksters – a group of psychedelic radicals from the sixties; and then there’s the Oregon University wrestler who set numerous state records – many of which stand today. Surprisingly, regardless of which Ken Kesey you were thinking of, you’d still be thinking of the same man. Born in Colorado September 17,1935, Kesey became a household name when his book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest became a huge critical and commercial success. On November 10, 2001, Ken passed away. Oregon logger and bluesman, Bobby Six Crows (www.rigginwarriors.com ), remembers Ken well. "He was one of my heroes. He wrote Sometimes a Great Notion, and it was filmed on the Oregon Coast. Great book…great movie (film title: Never Give an Inch) about loggers. My dad cut the trees that were felled in the movie. They made it look like Paul Newman did it. "I loved Ken. He was real. He went to Springfield High, and ironically, my gal’s mom had the yearbook with him in it. He was quite the athlete. There’s a statue of him on the Eugene Mall and I stop to talk to him." Ken’s son Zane, now 44, reflects on what it was like growing up in a wrestling family. "We had a wrestling mat in our living room. Dad was fierce. He had a very solid forehead that he used to clonk up against anybody’s with a tremendous amount of force. And he knew a lot of the old-fashion, really muscly moves. He respected many of the old masters. "My brother Jed and I practised. We kept at it and learned a number of moves, eventually getting better at it. We competed for Oregon Uni and that was a lot of fun. But there was a wreck. Our team van went over a cliff, and my brother died in it. That was in ’84."
It would have been Zane’s senior year, but he sustained numerous injuries, including neck problems, which caused him to give the sport away, though he continued to take an interest in wrestling as a spectator. Zane says he also welcomed the introduction of UFC events. "I got really excited when I saw the Ultimate Fighting stuff come out. It finally separated the difference between a wrestler and a professional wrestler, and a boxer and a martial artist. I’ve been in street fights, and one of the most important things to do is to get hold of the other guy’s arms so he can’t hit you. If you can get behind him and hold his arms down, then you’re doing really well. What’s a boxer going to do in that situation? "Right now it’s become much more equalised, where you have to be good at both. But you start to get knowledge of how skilled these wrestlers are. Man, they’re tough. They’re tough as nails. It’s a hard sport. There aren’t many martial artists who have been pounded that hard. The wrestlers are running their faces against the wall – working night and day at what they do – with no glory whatsoever. "I was always totally pissed at professional wrestling because it took away from my sport. And this is the ultimate goal – your sport. Now, with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, you can see the difference. There are no professional wrestlers in there." Ken Kesey had many wrestling achievements that stood the test of time, and he narrowly missed representing his country. "He still holds some of the University of Oregon records for the most wins. He was an alternate at the ’64 Olympics. That was because he wasn’t used to touch pins. He was used to the harder, full-style rules where you’ve gotta hold them down longer. So he was rolling through and got pinned. "He then lost a lot of weight to go down a class and wrestle for his state. In the process, his arm got dislocated, and that’s what kept him out of the army when they had a draft for the Vietnam War. That’s also what put him into Stanford’s writing program, where he wrote his books and took the LSD experiments. And so it’s really all because of wrestling that he became a writer and a psychedelic pioneer." It seemed the massively built Ken was larger than life. And who else would erect a huge banner inscribed: "The Merry Pranksters Welcome the Hell’s Angels" outside their house? Like the notion from Field of Dreams, "If you build it, they will come," the sign had the desired effect. Sonny Barger and his men arrived to party with Kesey.
Zane, Bluesman James T (see Knucklepit Blues) said Ken used to attend some of his gigs when your sister, Sunshine, was in the band. James said the thing that really stood out about Ken was that he had a real presence about him. Do you understand that? "Oh, absolutely. He commanded a room – physically, and in every other way. He would never back down from an argument, and was willing to stand his ground, both mentally and physically. He would never back down from a fight. "When I was a kid, I saw him take on four college guys at once, amongst these blackberry bushes. Aside from the scratches, he came out just fine. Everyone knew when he entered a room. And having him as a dad on a farm was a very disciplined way to grow up. People don’t understand that. They think of him as this psychedelic guru and dope smoker, who’d be real fun to have as a dad. "Yeah, he was fun, but you didn’t step out of line. He could look at you with a certain look and that would be all it would take. You’d stop doing whatever it was you were doing, real quick. And that’s the reason so many things happened around him. He had the ability to gather people around him and make these huge things happen. People didn’t question whether or not it was a good idea. He was the Pied Piper, and he made you think it was your idea." You can be big and strong, but it takes more than that. Was a lot of it superconfidence? "Absolutely. He was completely confident in everything he did. He had this feeling he was meant for something bigger than what he was doing. And he was headed straight for it. He had this superhero, super-logger look to him. But it was more than that. The guy was a genius as far as IQ was concerned, so he could hang in there with whatever conversation was taking place." Zane, I remember Ken took time out in March 1986 from coaching wrestling and running his farm in Oregon to attend the Adelaide Festival Writers’ Week, and to promote a collection of his stories called The Demon Box. During a TV appearance, 51-year-old Ken said he was then down to bench pressing 350lbs. What was his best benching? "I have no idea. We had a lot of weights around, but I never saw him working on record lifts. I remember when one of the members of the Grateful Dead – I think it was Bob Wear, because he’s into fitness and riding bikes everywhere – asked how much he could dead-lift, and Dad said he was a farmer and didn’t do that. He said, as long as he could pick up two bales of alfalfa, and step onto the back of a pick-up, he was doing fine." Was he like Matt Hughes in that he got a lot of his strength from working on the farm? "Well, he was plenty big and strong by the time he was working on our farm. But as a kid, he worked on a farm too. Yeah, I guess he probably did. He was pretty daunting by the time he was middle-aged. And one of the things you would see was his forearms - and his hands. He had these tremendous forearms that if he got a hold of you, you had a hard time getting loose. And they felt like they were made out of granite and sandpaper." What height was he? "He was six foot. I was always taller, but it wasn’t until recently that I weighed as much as he did. I was always scared of him. Whenever I’d say something wrong or backchat him, he’d say, ‘You wanna lock horns with me?’ Usually there was no answer." How is the bus, Further, coming along? "Well, we’re going to make a documentary and show it being fixed as it goes, because they want to show the first things that get done to it. There are photos at the website of the bus coming out of the swamp." For more on Ken Kesey and Further, you can check out Zane’s site: www.key-z.com.
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