Woodstock Icon & Anti-War Activist Country Joe McDonald Has Died
The leader of Country Joe & The Fish was 84 years old.
By Andy Kahn Mar 9, 2026 • 7:35 am PDT
Country Joe McDonald, the singer-songwriter and veterans’ activist best known for performing at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and for his anti-Vietnam War anthem “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag,” died on March 7. McDonald, who was diagnosed Parkinson’s disease, was 84 years old.
Born Joseph Allen McDonald on January 1, 1942, in Washington, D.C., he grew up in El Monte, California. McDonald moved to Berkeley in the early 1960s, where he became involved in the folk music scene and founded the political magazine Rag Baby.
In the fall of 1965, organizing around anti-Vietnam War demonstrations at the Oakland Induction Center led him to press a four-song EP under the name Country Joe & The Fish, a group that would formalize into a full rock band alongside Barry Melton and others. That EP included the first recorded version of “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” and the Lyndon Johnson satire “Superbird.”
The band signed with Vanguard Records in 1966 and released their debut album Electric Music for the Mind and Body in 1967, followed by I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die, both of which charted steadily and established the group as fixtures of the influential San Francisco scene.
The signature moment of McDonald’s career came at Woodstock in August 1969. Midway through his impromptu set, he led the crowd in a profane variation of a call-and-response cheer that preceded “Fixin’ To Die Rag” — a moment captured in the 1970 Woodstock film and seen by audiences worldwide. The film transformed the song into a widely recognized anti-war anthem.
After the breakup of Country Joe & The Fish, McDonald continued as a solo artist, recording for Vanguard and later Fantasy Records, where his 1975 album Paradise With an Ocean View yielded his most commercially successful run as a solo performer.
Throughout the 1980s and beyond, he became an outspoken advocate for Vietnam veterans, working with organizations including Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Vietnam Veterans of America and Swords to Plowshares.
Donations in McDonald’s memory may be made to Swords to Plowshares.
