West German postcard by Top Schlagerheft. Photo: Metronome Records GmbH. With Victor Willis.
German promotion card by Metronome Music GmbH, Hamburg, 1980. Photo: Can't Stop Productions. With Ray Simpson.
The men from Greenwich Village
Village People was created in 1977 in New York by French record producers Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo, along with a young New York entertainment lawyer, Allen Grubman. Together they formed Can't Stop Productions. They wanted to target disco's gay audience by featuring popular gay fantasy personae. The name Village People refers to Greenwich Village on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City, a neighbourhood strongly influenced by gay subculture. It is colloquially known simply as The Village.
According to a widely circulated version of the band’s formation, Jacques Morali spotted Felipe Rose in his Native American costume dancing in a crowd in New York’s Greenwich Village. Rose’s outfit gave him the idea of putting together a group of Village icons from various US social groups. When writing the songs for the first album, the songwriting and producing duo thought of places in the US that were shaped by gay life. This led them to Hollywood, San Francisco, Key West (on the second album) and Fire Island. Fire Island is a small island off Long Island, famous for its ‘tea dance parties’ on Sundays at 5 pm, where the best DJs played. During the recording sessions for the first Village People album at the New York branch of Sigma Sound Studios, only Victor Willis was present as lead singer. Professional backing singers were hired. Felipe Rose was invited to the sessions as a ‘mascot’ and also appeared in the first photos for the cover and a newspaper advert.
The album 'Village People' became an underground hit, and demand for performances grew. Once 100,000 copies had been sold, the producers put together a real group around Victor Willis and Felipe Rose. Following an audition, they recruited Glenn Hughes (biker), Alexander Briley (soldier), David Hodo (construction worker) and Randy Jones (cowboy), and toured the clubs. Their second album, 'Macho Man', only made it into the Top 20, but the title track, 'Macho Man', was played by many radio stations, and the band went from being an underground favourite to a mainstream act.
Whilst the producers were working on the songs for the third album, the two were walking down a street. Henri saw the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) sign and asked what it was. Jacques replied that it was a place where lots of men went when they were in town, where they’d make good friends and then go out together. As it was an association for men, it was quite popular amongst gay men. Henri suggested they could write a song about it. That’s how ‘Y.M.C.A.’ came about for the third album, ‘Cruisin’. The musical arrangement was by Horace Ott. The song marked the band’s breakthrough and became a number-one hit worldwide on the charts and in clubs. ‘Y.M.C.A.’ remains one of the most commercially successful pop songs in music history to this day. The album Cruisin’ went platinum and sold five to six million copies worldwide. Fans devised a dance to the song in which the four letters of the title are represented with arms and legs.
The title track of the fourth album, 'Go West', was actually intended to be the lead single. That assumption wasn’t far off the mark, as the track became a global hit in 1993 thanks to the Pet Shop Boys’ cover version. At the time, however, the single failed to catch on, so they decided to try releasing 'In the Navy' instead. The US Navy wanted the song for a television and radio recruiting campaign and offered to fund a music video. Filming took place at one of the world’s largest naval bases, the San Diego Naval Base in California, where a warship (the Reasoner, a Knox-class frigate), five aircraft (Phantoms) and 200 to 300 soldiers were made available. When a New York newspaper condemned the spending of so much public money on a music video, the Navy abandoned the campaign. This scandal generated so much publicity for the Village People that the song immediately shot to the top of the charts. On a major tour with a big band through 52 cities, Village People played twice at the sold-out Madison Square Garden in New York and once at the sold-out Felt Forum in Los Angeles.
German promotion card by Metronome Music GmbH, Hamburg. Photo: Can't Stop Productions. With Victor Willis.
Belgian collector card by Joepie. With Ray Simpson and The Ritchie Family.
Golden Raspberry Awards
At the end of 1979, Victor Willis left the group at the end of an international tour, including a performance with Bob Hope to entertain US troops. Willis was replaced by Ray Simpson, the brother of Valerie Simpson of Ashford & Simpson. He had sung background vocals with the group on their 1979 tour. According to a British music magazine, Willis had become unreliable and full of himself. However, he was reportedly promised a solo career as ‘compensation’. A solo album by Victor Willis is said to have been recorded but never released.
Simpson also replaced Willis for the group's feature film Can't Stop the Music (Nancy Walker, 1980), starring Steve Guttenberg, Valerie Perrine, and Bruce Jenner, later known as Caitlyn Jenner. The film tells a fictionalised biography of the Village People. Two other protégés of Morali and Belolo also appear in this film: David London and The Ritchie Family. In the US, the film and the album were a flop, but in Australia, they reached number one. Belolo believes the film was released too late, when disco was already losing popularity. Others also criticise it for painting a distinctly heterosexual picture of the band, leaving no room for the usual speculation. At the March 1981 Golden Raspberry Awards, the movie was named Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay, and was nominated in almost all the other categories.
In 1981, with New Wave music becoming more popular than disco, Village People replaced its on-stage costumes with a new look inspired by the New Romantic movement and released the album 'Renaissance'. It only attracted minor – mostly negative – attention and produced no hits, except for the group's first hit single in Italy with '5 O'clock in the Morning'. Their last album containing new material, the 1985 dance/Hi-NRG release 'Sex Over the Phone', was not a huge commercial success, but it fared better in sales and club play than 'Renaissance'. Of the original members, only soldier Alex Briley, leatherman Glenn Hughes and Native American Felipe Rose (who sang the title track) remained. The group once again had a new singer (Ray Stephens) and even a stand-in (Py Douglas).
Village People has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. Their songs can be heard on the soundtracks of such blockbusters as The Nutty Professor (Tom Shadyac, 1996), As Good as It Gets (James L. Brooks, 1997), Blast from the Past (Hugh Wilson, 1999) and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Jonathan Mostow, 2003). Examples of film homages and parody include a mention in the Western comedy City Slickers (Ron Underwood, 1991), a scene in Wayne's World 2 (Stephen Surjik, 1993), and the animated film Despicable Me 2 (Chris Renaud, Pierre Coffin, 2013). The Village People were awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for recording at 6529 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.
In 2017, after years of legal battles over royalties and songwriting credits, Victor Willis and Can't Stop Productions settled their differences. Willis acquired the licensing rights to the group name and formed his own Village People. He has been the official owner of the name since 2018. In November 2018, 'A Village People Christmas' was released, their first studio album in 33 years. On New Year's Eve, the group performed a concert in Times Square during Fox's New Year's Eve with Steve Harvey, and the crowd broke the record for the Y.M.C.A. dance. In 2019, Village People co-creator Henri Belolo died aged 82. In 2020, the Village People released a new single, ‘If You Believe’. It became their first top 20 hit in the US in forty years. President Trump used ‘Macho Man’ and ‘Y.M.C.A.’ for his (re-)election campaign. At the end of 2024, Victor Willis alleged to news media that the group's hit song 'Y.M.C.A.' was not a gay anthem and threatened to sue "each and every news organisation" that would refer to the song as such. On 19 January 2025, the day before the inauguration of his second term, President Trump was joined on stage by the Village People to the tune of this very same song.
Vintage photo. Valerie Perrine and Village People in Can't Stop the Music (Nancy Walker, 1980).
Source: Wikipedia (English, Dutch and German) and IMDb.
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