A singer known for performing at the original Woodstock in 1969 has died.
Country Joe McDonald was 84 years old.
McDonald died on March 8 from complications of Parkinson’s disease, his wife said in a statement, The Associated Press reported.
He was the lead of Country Joe and the Fish, which The New York Times called, “one of the first and most adventurous bands to rise from the Bay Area psychedelic rock scene of the 1960s.”
McDonald’s performance of “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” at the Woodstock festival, which included a profanity-filled cheer he called “a folk-protest moment.”
“There was a certain in-yer-face Kurt Cobain-ness about it that matched the attitude of the time pretty well,” he told The Independent in 2002.
“Some people alluded to peace and stuff (at Woodstock), but I was talking about Vietnam,” McDonald said in 2019. He called the opening chant “an expression of our anger and frustration over the Vietnam War, which was killing us, literally killing us.”
His band made it into the Billboard Top 40 with two albums, but the Times noted that they never made the big time like their contemporaries Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead.
He also dated Janis Joplin. He wrote a song at her request when they broke up, simply called “Janis,” the AP reported.
McDonald, as a solo artist, never made it onto the album charts.
He still wrote about Vietnam a decade after the war ended, in the release of 1986’s “Vietnam Experience.”
The singer and activist also helped organize the construction of a Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Berkeley, unveiled in 1995, the AP reported.
McDonald was born in 1942 in Washington, D.C. to a father who worked for a phone company and a mother who was a political activist. Both were members of the Communist Party and named their son after Josef Stalin, the Times reported.
His father was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in its efforts to find Communists in the U.S. Because of the investigation, he lost his job. Eventually, McDonald’s parents left the party. He joined the Navy at the age of 17 and served for three years.
He attended college but dropped out and moved to Berkeley “to become a beatnik.”
McDonald started Country Joe and the Fish, taking the name again from Stalin, who was called Country Joe because of his rural upbringing, and Fish was inspired by Mao Zedong’s writings.
In addition to his wife, Kathy, he leaves behind five children, four grandchildren and his brother, the Times reported.
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