“Country Joe” McDonald, whose off-the-cuff rendition of “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag” at the 1969 Woodstock Festival became a Vietnam antiwar anthem, has died. He was 84. The Berkeley, Calif., musician died Saturday of complications from Parkinson’s disease, said his wife of 43 y ears, Kathy McDonald, through his publicist. The front man for Country Joe and The Fish was already well known on the Bay Area counterculture circuit when he took the stage at the famed August 1969 Woodstock Festival for an impromptu solo performance at the urging of the band Santana, which was running a few minutes late and didn’t want to leave the crowd hanging, McDonald recounted in a 2017 interview. A few songs in, with no one paying attention as far as he could tell, McDonald threw out the first letter in his notoriously profane “Fish Cheer,” which started, “Gimme an F!” and ended with a K. To McDonald’s surprise, he said, the 400,000-strong crowd responded letter for letter, after which he belted out his satirical antiwar song, the famous “fixin-to-die,” igniting the masses. McDonald was born in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 1, 1942, to Communist parents who named him after Joseph Stalin, though they later renounced that ideology. He grew up in El Monte, Calif., and went on to serve three years in Japan with the Navy before circling back to settle in Berkeley. He co-founded Country Joe and The Fish with fellow rocker Barry “The Fish” Melton in 1965, releasing the “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag” as a single. The band made five albums from their 1967 debut album “Electric Music for the Mind and Body,” to 1970’s “CJ Fish,” after which they disbanded. A sixth and last album, “Reunion,” came out in 1977. McDonald made numerous solo albums after the band’s dissolution and also acted in several films, including “Gas-s-s-s-s,” “Zachariah,” “More American Graffitti” (in which he played himself with Country Joe and The Fish) and “Tales of the City,” a 1993 limited series. With News Wire Services ...read more read less