Country Joe McDonald dies at 84

American rock musician Joseph Allen “Country Joe” McDonald has passed away as a result of complications with Parkinson’s disease. Over the course of his over 50-year music career, McDonald worked both as a member of the band Country Joe and the Fish and as a solo artist.

His death was announced by his wife, Kathy McDonald. He was 84.

McDonald was born in 1942 in Washington, D.C., and raised in El Monte, California. He joined the U.S. Navy when he was 17, serving three years stationed in Japan. He remained committed to veteran’s affairs throughout his life, advocating for Vietnam Veterans Memorials around the US and taking part in the Vietnam War Summit at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2016.

He was most famous for the song ‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixing-To-Die Rag’, a darkly humorous anti-Vietnam War anthem. The song was often preceded in performances by the “Fish cheer”, though the chant of “F-I-S-H” was soon replaced by “F-U-C-K”. This chant made sure the song’s anger came through, and made it “impossible for the mainstream to treat [the song] in a noncontroversial way”, as McDonald said in a 2017 interview with The New York Times.

The song was certainly controversial: the altered “Fish cheer” led The Ed Sullivan Show to cancel a planned appearance from the band in 1968, and McDonald was almost arrested for performing the song in Worcester, Massachusetts in the same year. However, at Woodstock in 1969, a solo, acoustic guitar performance of the song brought the 400,000-person crowd to their feet, singing along. The song is remembered as one of the most popular anti-war anthems of the era.

McDonald is survived by his wife, Kathy, his five children, his four grandchildren, and his brother, Billy.