“Country” Joe McDonald, a hippie rock star of the Sixties whose “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” was a four-lettered rebuke to the Vietnam War that grew to become an anthem for protesters and a spotlight of the Woodstock music pageant, died Sunday. He was 84.
McDonald, who carried out together with his band, Country Joe and the Fish, died in Berkeley, California. His dying from issues of Parkinson’s illness was reported by Kathy McDonald, his spouse of 43 years, in an announcement issued by his publicist.
McDonald was a longtime presence within the Bay Area music scene, the place friends included the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane and his onetime girlfriend, Janis Joplin. He wrote or co-wrote tons of of songs, from psychedelic jams to soul-influenced rockers, and launched dozens of albums. But he was identified greatest for a speaking blues he accomplished in lower than an hour in 1965 — the yr President Lyndon Johnson started sending floor forces to Vietnam — and recorded within the Berkeley house of Arhoolie Records founder Chris Strachwitz.
In the deadpan type of McDonald’s hero, Woody Guthrie, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” was a mock celebration of warfare and early, mindless dying, with a refrain concertgoers and others would study by coronary heart:
And its 1, 2, 3 what are we combating for? Don’t ask me I don’t give a rattling, Next cease is Vietnam, And its 5, 6, 7 open up the pearly gates, Well there ain’t no time to marvel why, WHOOPEE we’re all gonna die
At the time he wrote “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag,” McDonald was co-leader of the newly fashioned Country Joe and the Fish and he added a particular “F-I-S-H” chant earlier than the music: “Give me an F, give me an I, give me an S, give me an H.” By the time his group appeared at Woodstock in 1969, the Fish have been on the verge of breaking apart, the mantra was a distinct four-letter phrase starting in “F” and McDowell was performing earlier than tons of of hundreds. Many would stand and sing alongside, a second captured within the Woodstock documentary launched the next yr. (For the movie, the music’s lyrics appeared as subtitles, a bouncing ball on prime).
“Some people alluded to peace and stuff (at Woodstock), but I was talking about Vietnam,” McDonald informed The Associated Press in 2019. He known as the opening chant “an expression of our anger and frustration over the Vietnam War, which was killing us, literally killing us.”
The music helped make him well-known, however introduced authorized {and professional} penalties. In 1968, Ed Sullivan canceled a deliberate look by Country Joe and the Fish on his selection present when he realized of the brand new opening cheer. Soon after Woodstock, McDonald was arrested and fined for utilizing the cheer at a present in Worcester, Massachusetts, an ordeal which helped hasten the band’s demise.
McDonald even carried out the music in court docket. His friendships with such political radicals as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin led to his being known as in as a witness within the “Chicago Eight (or Seven)” trial in opposition to organizers of anti-war protests on the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. On the stand, he defined how he had met with Hoffman and others and informed them about “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag.” When he started performing it, the choose interrupted and informed him “No singing is permitted within the courtroom.”
McDonald recited the phrases as a substitute.
In 2001, the daughter of the late jazz musician Edward “Kid” Ory sued McDonald, alleging that his music’s melody carefully resembled Ory’s Nineteen Twenties jazz instrumental “Muskrat Blues.” A U.S. district choose in California dominated in McDonald’s favor, citing partly the “unreasonable” delay between the music’s launch and the go well with being filed.
McDonald continued touring and recording for many years after Woodstock, however remained outlined by the late Sixties, a time interval he overtly longed for within the late Seventies rocker “Bring Back the Sixties, Man.” His albums included “Country,” “Carry On,” “Time Flies By” and “50,” and he would proceed writing protest songs, notably the 1982 launch “Save the Whales.”
Although outlined by his anti-war activism, McDonald would acknowledge conflicted emotions about Vietnam. He had served within the Navy, in Japan, within the late Nineteen Fifties, and located himself figuring out with each the protesters and people serving abroad. In the Nineteen Nineties, he helped set up the development of a Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Berkeley, formally unveiled in 1995.
“Many remembered the ugly confrontations that had happened during the war years in the city,” McDonald later wrote of the ceremony. “Yet the atmosphere proved to be one of reconciliation, not confrontation.”
McDonald was married 4 instances, most just lately to Kathy McDonald, and had 5 kids and 4 grandchildren. He was concerned on and off with Joplin over the second half of the Sixties, two younger hippies whose careers and temperaments drove them aside. When McDonald informed her he thought they need to break up, she requested him to jot down a music, which grew to become the ballad “Janis”:
Even although I do know that you simply and I
Could by no means discover the form of love we wished
Together, alone, I discover myself
Missing you and I
You and I
Country Joe McDonald didn’t come from the “country.” He was born on Jan. 1, 1942 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in El Monte, California. He was the son of onetime Communists who named him for Josef Stalin and in any other case inspired him to like music and establish with the working class. He was nonetheless in his teenagers when he started writing songs, enjoying trombone properly sufficient to steer his highschool marching band and educating himself folks, nation and blues songs on guitar.
After getting back from the Navy, within the early Sixties, he attended Los Angeles State College, however quickly moved to Berkeley and have become immersed in folks music and political activism. He based an underground journal, Rag Baby, for which “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” was written to assist promote, and helped begin such native teams because the Instant Action Jug Band and the Berkeley String Quartet.
In 1965, he fashioned Country Joe and the Fish with fellow singer-guitarist Barry “The Fish” Melton, later including Bruce Barthol on bass, organ participant David Bennett Cohen and Gary “Chicken” Hirsh on drums. The title was steered by journal writer Eugene “ED” Denson, who cited a quote from Mao Zedong that revolutionaries are “the fish who swim in the sea of the people.” McDonald was dubbed “Country Joe” as a result of Denson had heard that Stalin was often known as “Country Joe” throughout World War II.
Like the Jefferson Airplane, the Byrds and different bands, the Fish advanced from folks to folk-rock to acid rock. “Electric Music for the Mind and Body,” their debut album, was launched in May 1967 and featured a minor hit, “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine,” together with quite a few lengthy jams. A month after the album got here out, they appeared on the Monterey Pop Festival, the primary main rock gathering and a spotlight of the so-called Summer of Love.
“I think the ‘Summer of Love’ thing was manufactured by the media or something, because I don’t remember us thinking, ‘Wow, this is the “Summer of Love,′ ” he informed aquariandrunkard.com in 2018. “(But) I used to be simply thrilled to be part of this new counterculture and new tribe as a result of I had by no means actually felt snug within the different tribes that I used to be part of rising up and within the Navy. My mother and father have been really Jewish Communists. I by no means felt part of it, however I used to be actually thrilled and pleased to be a hippie.”
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