1960s counterculture star ‘Country’ Joe McDonald dead at 84
‘Country’ Joe McDonald, a 1960s countercultural star and Woodstock icon, has died aged 84.
The singer died in Berkeley, California on March 8th from complications arising from Parkinson’s disease, confirmed in a statement via his publicist from his wife, Kathy McDonald.
McDonald was best-known for his anthem ‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag’, which he wrote in protest against the then-president Lyndon Johnson, and then became a wider protest song for the Vietnam War.
Over the years he became an icon of the Bay Area musical scene, with a selection of his peers including the likes of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Janis Joplin, whom he dated at one point.
Along with his band, Country Joe and the Fish, a special “F-I-S-H” chant was added to the start of their most famous 1965 spoken word blues song.
However, when it came to performing this at Woodstock in 1969, the band were close to breaking up and as such, the chant was notoriously replaced with the letters “F-U-C-K”.
These chants brought McDonald various legal and professional challenges over the years that ensued, even with the dissolution of his band, being keenly affected by the cancellation of an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Despite this, the singer continued to write songs and numerous protest anthems over the course of the subsequent decades, releasing 19 studio albums in total. His final work was 50, which was released in 2017.
Although he later expressed mixed feelings about the Vietnam War, McDonald remained a staunch supporter of its veterans, helping to organise a memorial in Berkeley for those who lost their lives during the 1990s.
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