Country Joe McDonald

Joseph Allen McDonald was born in Washington, D.C., on January 1, 1942, and grew up in El Monte, California. His father, Worden McDonald, was born in Oklahoma and raised on a farm about 100 miles from Okemah, Woody Guthrie's birthplace; he worked for the telephone company and as a young man rode the rails across the country. His mother, Florence (née Plotnik), was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants and later served for many years as the City Auditor of Berkeley, California.

Both parents were Communist Party members in their youth and named their son after Joseph Stalin, though they later renounced the cause. "My family were the only communists in the entire area, and we lived a very isolated life," he told Let It Rock magazine in 1974. In the 1950s his father lost his job after being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

His first instrument was his father's Hawaiian guitar. He began writing songs as a teenager, taught himself folk, country and blues on guitar, and played trombone well enough to become conductor and president of the Arroyo High School marching band.

At 17 he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and spent three years stationed in Japan. He later said the experience gave him sympathy for those serving in the military, which shaped how he wrote about war: his best known song, he stressed, blamed politicians and weapons makers, not soldiers.

After his enlistment he attended Los Angeles State College (now California State University, Los Angeles) for about a year, where he printed a small magazine called Et Tu. In the early 1960s he left college and moved to Berkeley with his first wife, hoping to become a folk musician.

In Berkeley McDonald busked on Telegraph Avenue, worked at Lundberg Fretted Instruments, appeared on Gert Chiarito's Midnight Special radio show on KPFA, and formed the Berkeley String Quartet and the Instant Action Jug Band, the latter with guitarist Barry "The Fish" Melton. In 1965 he and Eugene "ED" Denson launched the magazine Rag Baby; its audio "talking issues" carried the first recordings of "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag", "Superbird" and other early songs.

Country Joe and the Fish played their first show under that name on November 5, 1965, at UC Berkeley with the Fugs and Allen Ginsberg. With Bruce Barthol, David Bennett Cohen and Gary "Chicken" Hirsh, the group evolved into one of the pioneering psychedelic bands of the San Francisco scene, sharing bills with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother and the Holding Company. Signed to Vanguard, they released Electric Music for the Mind and Body (May 1967), which spent 38 weeks on the Billboard album chart and included "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine", followed by I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die (November 1967), Together (1968), Here We Are Again (1969) and CJ Fish (1970). They played the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and Woodstock in 1969, where McDonald's solo performance of "Fixin'-to-Die Rag" became one of the best remembered moments of the festival film.

After the band split, McDonald recorded more than 30 solo albums. Thinking of Woody Guthrie (1969) and Tonight I'm Singing Just for You (1970) were cut in Nashville with session players including Hargus "Pig" Robbins and Grady Martin. War War War (1971) set the poems of Robert W. Service to music, Incredible! Live! (1972) carried liner notes by Studs Terkel, and Paris Sessions (1973) was praised by Robert Christgau for its feminist songs. He moved to Fantasy Records for Paradise with an Ocean View (1975) and later relaunched Rag Baby Records with Bill Belmont, issuing On My Own, Superstitious Blues (1991, featuring Jerry Garcia), Carry On, Time Flies By (2012) and 50 (2017). He reunited with Fish members for Reunion (1977), toured as the Country Joe Band in 2004, and in 2017 formed the Electric Music Band to perform his early psychedelic material.

On screen he appeared in Zachariah (1971), Roger Corman's Gas-s-s-s (1970), the Chilean film Que Hacer, More American Graffiti (1979) and the 1993 miniseries Tales of the City, and wrote songs for the film Quiet Days in Clichy (1970).

McDonald was married four times. His first marriage, to Kathe Werum, lasted from 1963 to 1966. In 1967 he had a relationship with Janis Joplin; when it ended she asked him to write a song about her, and he wrote "Janis". On March 31, 1968, he married Robin Menken, and their daughter Seven Anne McDonald was born that year in San Francisco. With his third wife, Janice Taylor, he had Devin (born 1976) and Tara (born 1980). With his fourth wife, Kathy (née Wright), married for 43 years at his death, he had Emily (born 1988) and Ryan (born 1991). He had four grandchildren: Celia, Reuben, Kepler and Marcus. He lived for most of his adult life in Berkeley, California.

Raised by parents who identified with the working class, McDonald saw himself as a political songwriter in the tradition of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. He opposed the Vietnam War but always distinguished between the war and the people sent to fight it, and spent decades supporting veterans. He campaigned for whales and seals with Greenpeace and the Cousteau Society, protested California budget cuts in 2005, and wrote "Support the Troops" after hearing Cindy Sheehan speak about her son Casey, who was killed in Iraq. His involvement in the FTA Show placed him on Richard Nixon's enemies list.

"I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" remains one of the most recognisable protest songs of the 20th century, and his Woodstock performance is one of the festival's signature images. The song has been used in films and television including Hamburger Hill, More American Graffiti and HBO's Generation Kill. Electric Music for the Mind and Body is regarded as a seminal psychedelic album. Beyond music, he led the effort to create the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Berkeley and helped establish the one in San Francisco, and took part in the Vietnam War Summit at the LBJ Library in 2016.

McDonald was not widely decorated with formal awards. His recognition came through his place in the history of the 1960s: his Woodstock set was preserved in the Oscar-winning 1970 documentary Woodstock, the Victoria and Albert Museum featured him in its 2016 "1960s Rebels" interview series, and outlets including The New York Times, Rolling Stone and The Guardian described him at his death as one of the defining voices of the counterculture.

With Country Joe and the Fish: Electric Music for the Mind and Body (1967), I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die (1967), Together (1968), Here We Are Again (1969), CJ Fish (1970), Reunion (1977).

Solo: Thinking of Woody Guthrie (1969), Tonight I'm Singing Just for You (1970), Hold On It's Coming (1971), War War War (1971), Incredible! Live! (1972), Paris Sessions (1973), Country Joe (1974), Paradise with an Ocean View (1975), Love Is a Fire (1976), Goodbye Blues (1977), Rock and Roll from Planet Earth (1978), Leisure Suite (1980), On My Own (1981), Child's Play (1983), Peace on Earth (1984), Vietnam Experience (1980s), Superstitious Blues (1991), Carry On (mid-1990s), Natural Imperfections with Bernie Krause (2005), A Tribute to Woody Guthrie (2008), Time Flies By (2012), 50 (2017).

Film and TV: Gas-s-s-s (1970), Zachariah (1971), More American Graffiti (1979), Tales of the City (1993).

The "Fish Cheer" turned into a four-letter cheer in 1968, which led to the band being banned from the Schaefer Music Festival tour and to The Ed Sullivan Show cancelling a booked appearance while letting them keep the fee. He was arrested and fined $500 for obscenity after using the cheer in Worcester, Massachusetts. At the 1970 Chicago Seven trial, Judge Julius Hoffman barred him from singing. In 2005 Bill O'Reilly compared him to Fidel Castro over his support for Cindy Sheehan. In a copyright suit brought by Babette Ory, daughter of Kid Ory, claiming the song's chorus derived from "Muskrat Ramble", a federal court in California ruled in McDonald's favour on the grounds of unreasonable delay and awarded him attorneys' fees.

Country Joe McDonald died on Saturday, March 7, 2026, at his home in Berkeley, California, at the age of 84. His wife Kathy announced that the cause was complications of Parkinson's disease, and the band's official Facebook page said he was surrounded by his family. No public memorial was planned at the time of the announcement, and a resting place has not been made public.