'Country' Joe McDonald, '60s rock star, proud protest counterculture icon, dies at 84

Source: AP

By HILLEL ITALIE
Updated 5:39 PM CDT, March 8, 2026

NEW YORK (AP) — “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 Sunday. 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:



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