Country Joe McDonald-a Psychedelic Warrior Takes the Final Trip
This past weekend, Country Joe McDonald died at the age of 84. He was the founding member and principal singer and songwriter for Country Joe and the Fish. If you are younger than 50, you probably have no idea who they were. If you are older, you may have forgotten. For those who do remember them, it’s probably for their song, “I-Feel-Like-I’m- Fixin’-to-Die-Rag,” a satirical anti-war song rendered as a Looney Tunes ragtime song, from the album of the same name. It was preceded there by “The Fish Cheer” which was soon transformed in their live performances to a more profane word beginning with F. “Give me an F. Give me a U. give me C. Give me a K. What’s that spell?” Audiences loved to join in. That got them kicked off an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show and got Joe arrested and fined for inciting an audience to lewd behavior in Worcester, Massachusetts. But the chant became renowned because of Joe singing it in the Woodstock film. It was a different time, and Country Joe and the Fish were emblematic of it.
Country Joe and the Fish were in the vanguard of the psychedelic movement and embraced it wholly. But Joe McDonald actually started as a folkie. He was born in Washington, DC in January of 1942, but his family soon moved to Los Angeles. His parents were members of the communist party which wasn’t safe in those days. His father was even hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee, led by the infamous Joseph McCarthy, and subsequently lost his job because of it. Joe, despite three years in the Navy, emerged in the San Francisco Bay area as a beatnik just as that scene was turning into the hippie movement. At age 25 in 1967, he was primed. After a stint as a folk-singer, he formed The Fish with guitarist Barry Melton, keyboardists David Cohen, bassist Bruce Barthol, and drummer Gary “Chicken” Hirsh.
Their debut album, Electric Music for the Mind and Body, was a soundtrack to an acid trip. It was full of trippy instrumentals, fanciful love songs and even spawned a Top 40 hit with “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine.” That definitely leaped out to me hearing it on the AM station, WRKO in Boston. That was coupled with dreamy excursions like “Bass Strings,” an instrumentally lysergic track whose opening lyric is “Hey partner, won’t you pass that reefer round,” and ends with a whispered “L.S.D.”
But the Fish could also rock out, as they did on songs like “Love,” “Rock and Soul Music” and the Barry Melton-penned track of paranoia in New York City, “The Streets of Your Town”, from their third album, Together.
The band had a lot in common with fellow Bay area band, The Grateful Dead. They shared deep folk roots and often old-timey, jug band sounding songs. The Fish injected more social commentary than most bands from the era, and that’s saying a lot. There was “Superbird,” an ode to Lyndon Johnson that included the lyrics,
Gonna send you back to Texas make you work on your ranch,Yeah yeah, oh yeah.
Yeah, gonna make him eat flowers.
Yeah, make him drop some acid…,
“An Untitled Protest,” was a more serious anti-war dirge, and of course, there’s the aforementioned “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag.”
Not counting their 1977 Reunion album, the band was over after their fifth record in 1970, CJ Fish, an underrated album with some powerful songs like the serrated groove of “The Love Machine” and the sweetly wistful “She’s A Bird.” But Joe continued on, returning to his background as a solo folk singer and releasing several politically-charged albums, including War War War, using the words of Canadian soldier and poet, Robert William Service, as lyrics.
Country Joe McDonald died on March 7 from Parkinson’s disease. I hear that so often now. He is survived by his wife of 43 years, Kathy. Their marriage is portrayed on the cover of the third Country Joe and the Fish album, Together. He also had five children: Seven McDonald, Devin McDonald, Tara Taylor McDonald, Emily McDonald Primus and Ryan McDonald; four grandchildren; and a brother, Billy.
Country Joe McDonald has gone possibly living the lyrics to “Bass Strings.”
“I’ll go out to the seashore, let the waves wash my mind,
Open up my head now just to see what I can find.”’