“Country” Joe McDonald, an iconic ’60s rock star who made a splash with a four-letter rebuke of the Vietnam War, died Sunday, March 7, 2026.
Joe McDonald, who performed with his band Country Joe and the Fish, died of health complications related to Parkinson’s disease in Berkeley, California.
He was known for being against the Vietnam War and for singing a world-famous song, I feel like I want to diewhich literally became an anthem for American protesters.
At the time he was writing the hitmaker’s lyrics, McDonald was co-frontman of his new band. County Joe and the Fishand before performing the song, he delivered a unique chant “FISH”.
This famous song says: “Give me an F, give me an I, give me an S, give me an H.”
McDonald once said Associated Press in 2019, the reason behind this chant, saying: “Some people have alluded to peace and other things. [at Woodstock]but I was talking about Vietnam.
He calls the opening song an expression of our anger and frustration over the Vietnam War, which was killing us, literally killing us. »
To the surprise of many, McDonald wrote the lyrics on paper in less than an hour in 1965, the same year that then-President Lyndon Johnson began sending troops to Vietnam.
Joe McDonald was born in Washington, DC, in 1942 and raised in El Monte, California.
He began writing songs as a teenager, when he had mastered three genres of classic American music: folk, blues, and country songs on the guitar.
McDonald was married four times, most recently to Kathy McDonald with whom he had five children and four grandchildren.
