'Country' Joe McDonald, '60s rock star, proud protest counterculture
icon, dies at 84
[March 09, 2026]
By HILLEL ITALIE
NEW YORK (AP) — “Country” Joe McDonald, a hippie rock star of the 1960s
whose “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” was a four-lettered rebuke to
the Vietnam War that became an anthem for protesters and a highlight of
the Woodstock music festival, died Sunday. He was 84.
McDonald, who performed with his band, Country Joe and the Fish, died in
Berkeley, California. His death from complications of Parkinson’s
disease was reported by Kathy McDonald, his wife of 43 years, in a
statement issued by his publicist.
McDonald was a longtime presence in the Bay Area music scene, where
peers included the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane and his onetime
girlfriend, Janis Joplin. He wrote or co-wrote hundreds of songs, from
psychedelic jams to soul-influenced rockers, and released dozens of
albums. But he was known best for a talking blues he completed in less
than an hour in 1965 — the year President Lyndon Johnson began sending
ground forces to Vietnam — and recorded in the Berkeley home of Arhoolie
Records founder Chris Strachwitz.
In the deadpan style of McDonald’s hero, Woody Guthrie,
“I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” was a mock celebration of war and
early, senseless death, with a chorus concertgoers and others would
learn by heart:
And its 1, 2, 3 what are we fighting for? Don’t ask me I don’t give a
damn, Next stop is Vietnam, And its 5, 6, 7 open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why, WHOOPEE we’re all gonna die
At the time he wrote “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag,” McDonald was
co-leader of the newly formed Country Joe and the Fish and he added a
special “F-I-S-H” chant before the song: “Give me an F, give me an I,
give me an S, give me an H.” By the time his group appeared at Woodstock
in 1969, the Fish were on the verge of breaking up, the chant was a
different four-letter word beginning in “F” and McDonald was performing
before hundreds of thousands. Many would stand and sing along, a moment
captured in the Woodstock documentary released the following year. (For
the film, the song’s lyrics appeared as subtitles, a bouncing ball on
top).
“Some people alluded to peace and stuff (at Woodstock), but I was
talking about Vietnam,” McDonald told The Associated Press in 2019. He
called the opening chant “an expression of our anger and frustration
over the Vietnam War, which was killing us, literally killing us.”
The song helped make him famous, but brought legal and professional
consequences. In 1968, Ed Sullivan canceled a planned appearance by
Country Joe and the Fish on his variety show when he learned of the new
opening cheer. Soon after Woodstock, McDonald was arrested and fined for
using the cheer at a show in Worcester, Massachusetts, an ordeal which
helped hasten the band’s demise.
McDonald even performed the song in court. His friendships with such
political radicals as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin led to his being
called in as a witness in the “Chicago Eight (or Seven)” trial against
organizers of anti-war protests at the 1968 Democratic National
Convention in Chicago. On the stand, he explained how he had met with
Hoffman and others and told them about “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die
Rag.” When he began performing it, the judge interrupted and told him
"No singing is permitted in the courtroom.”
McDonald recited the words instead.
In 2001, the daughter of the late jazz musician Edward “Kid” Ory sued
McDonald, alleging that his song’s melody closely resembled Ory’s 1920s
jazz instrumental “Muskrat Blues.” A U.S. district judge in California
ruled in McDonald’s favor, citing in part the “unreasonable” delay
between the song’s release and the suit being filed.
A man of the '60s
McDonald continued touring and recording for decades after Woodstock,
but remained defined by the late 1960s, a time period he openly longed
for in the late 1970s rocker “Bring Back the Sixties, Man.” His albums
included “Country,” “Carry On,” “Time Flies By” and “50,” and he would
continue writing protest songs, notably the 1975 release “Save the
Whales.”
Although defined by his anti-war activism, McDonald would acknowledge
conflicted feelings about Vietnam. He had served in the Navy, in Japan,
in the late 1950s, and found himself identifying with both the
protesters and those serving overseas. In the 1990s, he helped organize
the construction of a Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Berkeley, formally
unveiled in 1995.
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Country singer Joe McDonald plays during the Heros of Woodstock
concert at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, N.Y.,
Saturday, Aug. 15, 2009, marking the 40th anniversary of the
original 1969 Woodstock concert. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, File)
“Many remembered the ugly confrontations that had happened during the
war years in the city,” McDonald later wrote of the ceremony. “Yet the
atmosphere proved to be one of reconciliation, not confrontation.”
McDonald was married four times, most recently to Kathy McDonald, and
had five children and four grandchildren. He was involved off and on
with Joplin over the second half of the 1960s, two young hippies whose
careers and temperaments drove them apart. When McDonald told her he
thought they should break up, she asked him to write a song, which
became the ballad “Janis”:
Even though I know that you and I
Could never find the kind of love we wanted
Together, alone, I find myself
Missing you and I
You and I
___
Raised on politics, and music
Country Joe McDonald did not come from the “country.” He was born on
Jan. 1, 1942 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in El Monte, California.
He was the son of onetime Communists who named him for Josef Stalin and
otherwise encouraged him to love music and identify with the working
class. He was still in his teens when he began writing songs, playing
trombone well enough to lead his high school marching band and teaching
himself folk, country and blues songs on guitar.
After returning from the Navy, in the early 1960s, he attended Los
Angeles State College, but soon moved to Berkeley and became immersed in
folk music and political activism. He founded an underground magazine,
Rag Baby, for which “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” was written to
help promote, and helped start such local groups as the Instant Action
Jug Band and the Berkeley String Quartet.
In 1965, he formed Country Joe and the Fish with fellow singer-guitarist
Barry “The Fish” Melton, later adding Bruce Barthol on bass, organ
player David Bennett Cohen and Gary “Chicken” Hirsh on drums. The name
was suggested by magazine publisher Eugene “ED” Denson, who cited a
quote from Mao Zedong that revolutionaries are “the fish who swim in the
sea of the people.” McDonald was dubbed “Country Joe” because Denson had
heard that Stalin was known as “Country Joe” during World War II.
Like the Jefferson Airplane, the Byrds and other bands, the Fish evolved
from folk to folk-rock to acid rock. “Electric Music for the Mind and
Body,” their debut album, was released in May 1967 and featured a minor
hit, “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine,” along with numerous long jams. A
month after the album came out, they appeared at the Monterey Pop
Festival, the first major rock gathering and a highlight of the
so-called Summer of Love.
“I think the ‘Summer of Love’ thing was manufactured by the media or
something, because I don’t remember us thinking, 'Wow, this is the
“Summer of Love,′ ” he told aquariandrunkard.com in 2018. "(But) I was
just thrilled to be a part of this new counterculture and new tribe
because I had never really felt comfortable in the other tribes that I
was a part of growing up and in the Navy. My parents were actually
Jewish Communists. I never felt a part of it, but I was really thrilled
and happy to be a hippie.”
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