"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 Saturday. 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 was 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 that 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.
McDonald continued touring and recording for decades after Woodstock, but remained defined by the late 1960s, a 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.
"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."
"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.
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