<\/p>\n
In 2019, Country Joe McDonald called into the Rolling Stone Music Now <\/em>podcast to discuss the 50th anniversary of his career-making performance at Woodstock. In what turned out to be his final interview with Rolling Stone<\/em>, he discussed his memories of the festival and much more. In the wake of McDonald\u2019s death at age 84<\/a>, here\u2019s that full conversation, published here for the first time. (To hear the interview, press play below.)<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n How important is the Woodstock festival in your own memories? Did it feel important to you at the time, or did it feel like just another gig?<\/strong> You\u2019ve said that you actually hadn\u2019t planned on a lifelong career in music, and Woodstock kind of led you on that path. How did that happen?<\/strong> Your fans at Woodstock already knew what you were going to do as soon as you called out for an F, right?<\/strong> So they just asked me to go out there solo with a guitar. So I did a few songs, which you can now hear on the [new] box set. I was saving the Fuck Cheer and \u201cFixin-to-Die-Rag\u201d for the rock and roll Country Joe and the Fish set, which was later on that night, right? And I got off stage and my manager said, \u201cWhat difference does it make? Nobody\u2019s paying attention to you.\u201d And so I thought, okay, that\u2019s great, and then I went out and I yelled, \u201cGimme an F.\u201d And they all stopped talking and looked at me and they responded. I didn\u2019t know they were singing along until [producer] Michael Wadleigh brought me to LA and showed me the film, and then I could see that they were mouthing the words, you know, from the stage. I couldn\u2019t see that. From the stage I couldn\u2019t really hear them singing, so that\u2019s why I was yelling at them to sing louder. But I was shocked. And then from the box set, I found out that the crowd spelling \u201cfuck\u201d and yelling \u201cfuck\u201d was overdubbed in the studio because the sound wasn\u2019t loud enough because of the way they placed the microphones.<\/p>\n How do you react to hearing that moment now?<\/strong> Since you were there the whole time, what else stands out in your memory from other artists\u2019 sets or backstage moments?<\/strong> You were involved in the Woodstock 50 event before it got canceled. What happened there?<\/strong> Any other plans to commemorate the anniversary, or are you just going to go on with your life?<\/strong> Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2019, Country Joe McDonald called into the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast to discuss the 50th anniversary of his career-making performance at Woodstock. In what turned out to be his final interview with Rolling Stone, he discussed his memories of the festival and much more. In the wake of McDonald\u2019s death at age 84, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2318626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[449304,308055,449306,314737,347880,449305],"class_list":["post-2318625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-country-joe-mcdonald","tag-mcdonalds","tag-michael-wadleigh","tag-rolling-stone","tag-woodstock-festival","tag-woodstock-generation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Country-Joe-McDonalds-Final-Rolling-Stone-Interview-\u2018Woodstock-Changed-Everything.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2318625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2318627,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2318625\/revisions\/2318627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2318626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2318625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2318625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2318625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Well, it certainly didn\u2019t feel like another gig. I was there for the whole three days. I was there listening to Hendrix play the \u201cStar Spangled Banner.\u201d It was a wonderful experience the whole three days. I got there on Thursday and I left on Monday. Was on stage watching a lot of the shows, and I had a wonderful time. I never thought about the historic significance of it, but I do believe that the Woodstock Festival, film and album changed everything in America. And the changes are still happening today, right? It\u2019s still a challenge between the mores and the tastes of the World War II generation and the Woodstock generation, that battle is still going on. But everything else got ingrained into society. We take for granted all the things that Woodstock brought us. Colors, sound, fashion, music. It was the basis for modern rock n\u2019 roll as we know it.<\/p>\n
You know, when I was in high school, I was in the concert band, the president of the band, the student conductor. I wrote my first rock and roll songs when I was 15, but by \u201969 we had already been in the musicians union for several years and had toured. We played Monterey, we played quite a few festivals. We had a very, very busy schedule. And \u201969 was the release of two LPs. So I would say that my musical career was chugging right along pretty well, but it was the birth for me of a solo career as Country Joe McDonald. The band was breaking up in \u201969 and I don\u2019t know what I would\u2019ve done. I would\u2019ve continued to be a musician I\u2019m sure, just to pay the rent. And I had a lot of fun doing that. But that launched Country Joe McDonald, that impromptu performance of singing the cheer, which still cannot be said on radio and television.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s correct. There\u2019s a really simple, logical reason for that, which was that the year before at the Schaefer Beer Festival in Central Park, we had introduced the Fuck Cheer. We had changed the \u201cFish Cheer\u201d to the fuck cheer that night. And we were banned from the Schaefer Beer Festival and The Ed Sullivan Show<\/em> forever. And there was a station in New York that was playing the \u201cFixin-to-Die Rag\u201d every day. People were being forced to go into the military and go and die in Vietnam. So that was a statement in the song that everybody could identify with. But I didn\u2019t think about that when I was asked to perform, to just do something on stage, just to fill in some time for the Santana band to set up and get ready to go because they were running behind time.<\/p>\n
I love it. It\u2019s great and it really cuts through the bullshit of politics and everything. You know, I was banned from all the municipal auditoriums in America over that cheer. It gave me a lot of problems. Of course, you couldn\u2019t play it on the radio, you know? So my most famous song couldn\u2019t be played on the radio. Some people lost their jobs for playing it on the radio, but it\u2019s great. It\u2019s a great moment. I\u2019m happy and proud that I could represent the Vietnam War and Vietnam veterans in that moment. It was very powerful, and we\u2019re all lucky that Michael Wadleigh was there to capture it. He filmed the guy who shot the footage of me and made the executive decision to put it in the film. He also wanted to put in a giant \u201cFUCK.\u201d But they put the nix on that. They said, no, that was too radical. But when you think about including the cheer on that album in 1969, it was just unbelievable that they allowed it to go in the movie and on the album.<\/p>\n
Well, the Santana band of course was just incredible. I mean, that footage from the film was unbelievable. And over the years, the film and my live experiences have melded in a certain way, but Sly and the Family Stone, of course. It was fun watching Abbie Hoffman get hit in the head with a guitar by [Pete] Townshend. And I was there and I watched that. That was very entertaining. You know, everything was really entertaining and really wonderful. Spirit of peace and love. And just in the past couple days I\u2019ve been watching some of these documentaries and I\u2019m just astounded. I really am astounded at the size and the volume. The whole thing is just unbelievable. You know, when you look at that footage and you hear that music and all that music was brand new, you know. It was brand new at the time. It was so exciting to hear that music played so wonderfully. Wow. Just incredible. Really, really incredible.<\/p>\n
I never backed out of it. As a matter of fact, we kind of noticed like three months ago from Michael Wadleigh\u2019s team, \u201cDon\u2019t worry, everything\u2019s gonna be fine.\u201d And I followed it in the news. Nobody ever told me anything. I followed in the news just the same way you followed it in the news. And I found out a couple days ago because I was afraid to back out because I was afraid that I would lose my deposit. \u2018Cause I got a 50% deposit. And sometimes if you cancel, then the promoter can blame it on you. So I was waiting for it to fall apart. It became obvious like a couple weeks ago that it was gonna die, and then when it fell apart, I cashed the check and there you go.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m retired now. I did a series of performances [recently], and now I\u2019m done. I\u2019m finished. I\u2019m completely retired. I\u2019ve been dabbling with being retired for a couple years and now I\u2019m just watching the grandkids, staying home and getting to know my neighbors.<\/p>\n