‘Country Joe’ McDonald obit

‘Country Joe’ McDonald, Who Urged the Crowd at the ’69 Woodstock Festival to ‘Gimme an F,’ Dies

 

He was not on the list.

“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 source close to his wife, Kathy. The musician and his band came to national prominence following his solo performance at the 1969 Woodstock festival of his anti-Vietnam War protest song, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die-Rag,” which was coupled with a modified version of his “The Fish Cheer” that included an audience call-and-response to “Gimme an F” to spell out the “F word.” The song led off side two of 1970’s official three-LP set from the landmark festival and the performance was featured prominently in Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 documentary film of the event.

Country Joe and the Fish were founded in 1965 by McDonald and Barry “The Fish” Melton, the group’s lead guitarist. Many of the Berkeley-based group’s songs focused on political and social issues of the day, and were first released 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 popularity on the local circuit, performing at San Francisco venues such as the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom, as well as outside of the Bay Area.

In 1969, prior to the famous Woodstock appearance, Barthol, Hirsh and Cohen left the band and were replaced by Mark Kapner on keyboards, Doug Metzner on bass and Greg Dewey on drums. The band dissolved in 1970 and McDOnald began focusing on his solo career.

In a Nov. 2024 feature story for Best Classic Bands—“Country Joe is More Than Woodstock—About 40 Albums More”—writer Rip Rense noted that McDonald wrote and recorded somewhere around 40 albums in all, not including the landmark ’60s psychedelic masterworks by Country Joe and the Fish, played and toured constantly, and lent his voice to cause after cause, from opposing war to advocating for military 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, both released in 1967, are still considered landmarks of psychedelic rock by many.

Even with that significant recorded output, it was McDonald’s solo performance at the ’69 Woodstock festival that remained his signature moment. The lyrics of “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die-Rag” includes the chorus:

 

And it’s one, two, three,

What are we fighting for?

Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,

Next stop is Vietnam;

And it’s five, six, seven,

Open up the pearly gates,

Well, there ain’t no time to wonder why,

Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.

Joseph Allen McDonald was born on Jan. 1, 1942, in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of El Monte, where he was active in his high school’s marching band. While still a teenager, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and was stationed in Japan for three years. Upon his return, his goal was to become a professional musician. In the ensuing years, he met the future members of what became his namesake band—the nickname “Country Joe” was originally given to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin—ultimately leading to a recording contract with the Vanguard label.

Of his signature song, he told 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.”