Paul Krassner, the renowned ’60s rabble-rouser, Cannabis Cup judge, solo performer and publisher of the long-running underground newspaper the Realist, died Sunday, July 21, at his home in Desert Hot Springs (Riverside County), his daughter said. He was 87.

Krassner had been in the care of a neurologist after losing his ability to walk when his condition deteriorated rapidly and he was released to hospice care, according to Holly Krassner Dawson of Napa.

Credited with co-founding the Yippies (Youth International Party) in 1967, Krassner called himself an “investigative satirist.” People magazine called him “father of the underground press.” Radio host Don Imus called him “one of the comic geniuses of the 20th century,” and the FBI reportedly called him “a nut, a raving unconfined nut,” which George Carlin endorsed.

“This man is dangerous and funny,” Carlin said. “And necessary.”

Throughout the 1970s and most of the ’80s, Krassner lived in San Francisco, after being sent west by Bob Dylan to deliver a message to Joan Baez. He immediately fell in with author and Merry Prankster Ken Kesey, and they spent time philosophizing at Kesey’s place in La Honda. At first, Krassner lived in a place on a cliff overlooking the ocean outside Watsonville. Among his house guests were John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

He brought the Realist west with him when he moved from New York and continued to publish in San Francisco, Watsonville or wherever. While living in Watsonville, he commuted on weekends to San Francisco, where he had a radio show on KSFX and then KSAN, the famous free-form FM rock music station. Krassner had a seven-month talk show on KSFX and then was given a tryout on KSAN. It turned out to not be free-form enough for Krassner. He was banned from the station after an on-air stunt with sex worker Margo St. James.

He fulfilled his mission of delivering the message from Dylan to Baez and also managed to participate in enough of the epochal events of the ’60s to be the first living person inducted into the Counterculture Hall of Fame. His legs were included in a 1971 film by Lennon and Ono, “Up Your Legs Forever,” which consisted entirely of the camera moving up bare legs. That is the kind of project he could get behind.

Paul James Krassner was born April 9, 1932, in Brooklyn, N.Y. and was raised in Astoria in Queens, the son of a newspaper printer. A child violin prodigy, Krassner made his debut on Jan. 14, 1939, at Carnegie Hall. He was 6 and the youngest concert artist to play the famous New York City stage.

In his autobiography, “Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counter-Culture,” Krassner describes that moment as an epiphany because his leg started to itch at the moment he commenced his solo on the Vivaldi Concerto in A Minor. Standing on one foot, he raised his other foot to scratch it, and the audience laughed.

“It was only when they laughed that we had really connected, and I imprinted on that sound,” he wrote. “I wanted to hear it again. I was hooked. And the first laugh was free.”

The second laugh he got paid for, as a stand-up comic who went by the name of Paul Maul, using his fiddle as a prop. He got a gig doing stand-up at the Christmas party for Mad magazine, and that led to him writing for Mad. The fact that he had dropped out of Baruch College three units shy of graduation was not a barrier to entry.

He liked to write satire, but Mad was for kids, so he started the Realist, which was essentially Mad for adults. As his own editor and publisher, Krassner was given free rein to ramble on, and that is what he did. The overhead was low. The Realist was typed and mimeographed and stapled. He was 26 and still living with his parents. But he had comic Steve Allen as his first subscriber, followed by 299 others.

His second interview for the Realist was with the edgy comedian Lenny Bruce, and they became kindred spirits in the war against censorship of any kind. Krassner subsidized the Realist by freelancing for magazines. “Guilt Without Sex” was the title of one piece he sold to Playboy. Krassner eventually moved to his own place in Manhattan, where he met Jeanne Johnson. They were married in Norman Mailer’s living room in Brooklyn Heights, in 1963. Their only child, Holly, was born in 1964.

In 1971, his marriage over, Krassner moved to San Francisco, where he became roommates with author and Whole Earth Catalog editor Stewart Brand. He lived across the street from political journalist and eccentric Warren Hinckle. Krassner’s main forum was the Realist, which he founded in 1958 and managed to publish uninterrupted until 1974. The publication often consisted solely of Krassner’s ramblings. Then, in 1985, he brought it back.

Krassner was a master at turning good publicity against himself and turning bad publicity in his favor.

When People labeled him the father of the underground press, he publicly demanded a paternity test. After newscaster Harry Reasoner wrote in his memoir, “Krassner not only attacks establishment values; he attacks decency in general,” Krassner formed a one-man show titled “Attacking Decency in General.”

He followed that with a book called “In Praise of Indecency: Dispatches From the Valley of Porn.”

He was a participatory journalist to the extreme. He wrote about LSD, then became a convert, dosing with Dr. Timothy Leary and Kesey before, famously, accompanying Groucho Marx on his first acid trip.

He edited Bruce’s autobiography, “How to Talk Dirty and Influence People,” then became a comic himself. He did stand-up on the college circuit and released two albums, “We Have Ways of Making You Laugh” and “Brain Damage Control.”

His books include “The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race: The Satirical Writings of Paul Krassner,” and three drug anthologies, “Pot Stories for the Soul,” “Psychedelic Trips for the Mind and Soul,” and “Magic Mushrooms and Other Highs: From Toad Slime to Ecstasy.”

In 1986 Krassner left San Francisco for Venice Beach, and two years later he married his neighbor Nancy Cain. They lived in Venice until 2000, when they moved to the desert.

He never retired. He recently wrote the introduction to a book about revolutionary anarchist Abbie Hoffman, his co-founder of the Yippies, and was at work on a novel, “his first truly fictional book,” his daughter said. On Sept. 24, his last book, “Zapped by the God of Absurdity: The Best of Paul Krassner,” will be published.

Krassner is survived by his wife, Nancy Cain, of Desert Hot Springs; daughter, Holly Krassner Dawson of Napa; and brother, George Krassner of Topsham, Maine.



