Bay Area music legend, who performed at Woodstock, dies at 84
Country Joe McDonald, the Bay Area music legend who crafted one of the definitive protest anthems of the Vietnam War era, died on March 7.
The longtime Berkeley resident, who is best known for fronting psychedelic folk-rock group Country Joe and the Fish in the 1960s, was 84.
McDonald died of complications related to Parkinson’s Disease, according to the New York Times.
The singer-songwriter will be long remembered for the Country Joe and the Fish favorite “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag,” which originally came out in 1965 and went on to become a counterculture anthem. The song was usually accompanied by the “Fish Cheer” — spelling out the word F-I-S-H — but was sometimes altered to spell an expletive instead.
The most famous rendition of the altered “Fish Cheer” occurred when McDonald performed in front of hundreds of thousands of members of the hippie movement at the Woodstock music festival in 1969.
Yet, McDonald penned hundreds of others songs and released 30-plus albums during a recording career that spanned multiple decades.
Born in Washington D.C. on New Year’s Day 1942, McDonald grew up in Southern California and moved to Berkeley in the early ’60s with the hopes of becoming a folk singer. As the story goes, he began busking on Telegraph Avenue, appeared on legendary local public radio station KPFA and become heavily involved in the Free Speech Movement.
McDonald also met up with guitarist Barry Melton, who he’d go on to co-found Country Joe and the Fish in 1965.
In 1967, the group recorded and released its debut album — “Electric Music for the Mind and Body” — a pioneering and often-overlooked psychedelic-rock gem. The album didn’t exactly fly off the shelves when it first came out, but it would continue to build momentum as word on Country Joe and the Fish spread — especially following a well-received set at the Monterey International Pop Festival — and “Electric Music for the Mind and Body” eventually managed to break into the Top 40.