‘Country’ Joe McDonald, ‘60s rock musician, Woodstock standout, dies at 84

NEW YORK — “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.