“Country Joe” McDonald, exhorting the crowd at the 1969 Woodstock pageant to “Gimme an F.”
“Country Joe” McDonald, the lead singer, songwriter and co-founder of Country Joe and the Fish, a ’60s-era psychedelic rock group that was a fixture of the San Francisco Bay Area music scene, died yesterday (March 7, 2026). His passing, at age 84 of Parkinson’s, in Berkeley, Calif., was shared with Best Classic Bands by a supply shut to his spouse, Kathy. The musician and his band got here to nationwide prominence following his solo efficiency at the 1969 Woodstock pageant of his anti-Vietnam War protest tune, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die-Rag,” which was coupled with a modified model of his “The Fish Cheer” that included an viewers call-and-response to “Gimme an F” to spell out the “F word.” The tune led off aspect two of 1970’s official three-LP set from the landmark pageant and the efficiency was featured prominently in Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 documentary movie of the occasion.
Country Joe and the Fish had been based in 1965 by McDonald and Barry “The Fish” Melton, the group’s lead guitarist. Many of the Berkeley-based group’s songs targeted on political and social problems with the day, and had been first launched on two EPs, Talking Issue #1: Songs of Opposition (Rag Baby, 1965) and Country Joe and the Fish (Rag Baby, 1966). With the addition of keyboardist/guitarist David Cohen, drummer Gary “Chicken” Hirsh and Bruce Barthol on bass, the group gained reputation on the native circuit, performing at San Francisco venues resembling the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom, in addition to outdoors of the Bay Area.
In 1969, prior to the well-known Woodstock look, Barthol, Hirsh and Cohen left the band and had been changed by Mark Kapner on keyboards, Doug Metzner on bass and Greg Dewey on drums. The band dissolved in 1970 and McDOnald started specializing in his solo profession.
In a Nov. 2024 characteristic story for Best Classic Bands—“Country Joe is More Than Woodstock—About 40 Albums More”—author Rip Rense famous that McDonald wrote and recorded someplace round 40 albums in all, not together with the landmark ’60s psychedelic masterworks by Country Joe and the Fish, performed and toured always, and lent his voice to trigger after trigger, from opposing struggle to advocating for navy veterans, nurses, animals and the ecosystem.
“He [was] a master of the piquant ballad, a scion of the sardonic sung commentary, a pioneer of the psychedelic, a wit-meister of the comic ditty, an avatar of music-as-activism, and a poet,” Rense wrote.
“Yet the bulk of his work is not widely known. Even the singular, revolutionary music McDonald made on the four albums by Country Joe and the Fish (not counting a fifth with a different line-up, and an uneven 1977 reunion album)—long hailed as classic San Francisco ’60s fare—has always been upstaged by the more high-profile bands of the time, notably Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead.” Nonetheless, Country Joe and the Fish’s first two albums, Electric Music for the Mind and Body, and I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die, each launched in 1967, are nonetheless thought of landmarks of psychedelic rock by many.
Even with that important recorded output, it was McDonald’s solo efficiency at the ’69 Woodstock pageant that remained his signature second. The lyrics of “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die-Rag” contains the refrain:
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we combating for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a rattling,
Next cease is Vietnam;
And it’s 5, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well, there ain’t no time to marvel why,
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.
Watch Country Joe and the Fish carry out “Rock & Soul Music” at Woodstock
Joseph Allen McDonald was born on Jan. 1, 1942, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of El Monte, the place he was energetic in his highschool’s marching band. While nonetheless a youngster, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and was stationed in Japan for 3 years. Upon his return, his aim was to turn out to be knowledgeable musician. In the ensuing years, he met the future members of what turned his namesake band—the nickname “Country Joe” was initially given to Soviet chief Joseph Stalin—finally main to a recording contract with the Vanguard label.
Of his signature tune, he instructed the New York Times in 2017 that he “was inspired to write a song about how soldiers have no choice in the matter, but to follow orders, but with the irreverence of rock ‘n’ roll. It was essentially punk rock before punk existed.”
Many of Country Joe’s recordings can be found here.
Watch Country Joe and the Fish carry out “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine” at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival
