Yes, I know that Pride Month is just gone, but the thing is July 1 is Victor Willis's birthday. Willis (b. 1951) was the main singer and songwriter for the Village People, although amusingly, by all reports he was neither gay nor a resident of Greenwich Village and, at the outset there wasn't even a group. The group was the brainchild of French music producer/songwriter Jacques Morali (1947-1991), who had gotten inspired by the costumed nightlife scene of the gay community in Greenwich Village. (And as it happens, HIS birthday was July 4!) It was Morali and his professional partner Henry Belolo (1936-2019) who hired Willis and the other members of the group. Morali was gay; Belolo was not.
Many have been the musical outfits, from the Monkees to the Archies to the Sex Pistols to Milli Vanilli that were conceived on paper, and/or in a recording studio, with auditions held ex post facto to make the enterprise a reality. As a theatre person, I would never throw shade on this perfectly valid M.O. Come to that, most of the Rolling Stones were cast from try-outs in response to a classified ad. It's not rare, but a lot of people like to make out that such projects are some sort of big hoax. What's the hoax? This is show business! You bought a record, you listened to it, you liked it -- where's the swindle?
Willis (usually the cop, although he sometimes wore other outfits) was originally hired to be a backup singer, but in the sessions for the first album he showed himself to be so valuable that he was quickly bumped up to lead. He recruited a lot of the men who filled out the rest of the vocal group, although the personnel was perpetually shifting. The constant was the costumes, and that's the only way the public knew them: the "cop", the "construction worker", the "cowboy", the "Indian", the "biker" etc. (as opposed to their names).
It was all so high concept, it's startling (if wonderful) that it worked so well. The Village People sound tapped into the disco craze that was peaking just as they released their eponymous first album in 1977, a few months prior to the release of the movie Saturday Night Fever. And the subjects for their hit singles were hilarious makework things, as if somebody was playing some parlor game where you had to guess all the most obvious buzzwords and slogans related to gay culture. Their debut single "San Francisco" (1977) only went to #102, but it was followed quickly by "Macho Man" (1978, #25), "Y.M.C.A." (1978, #2), and "In the Navy" (1979, #3). Theoretically this could have gone on forever. Think of the hit song possibilities: "In the Bath House", "Chelsea Piers", "Prison Shower", "The Ramble"!
The industry sold The Village People to the public with vehemence. Their songs were not only on the radio constantly, but being so visual, the group was also perpetually on television. One saw them on American Bandstand (and Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eve), Soul Train, Dance Fever, The Merv Griffin Show, The Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, Bob Hope specials, and (I'm saving the best for last) a special entitled Playboy's Roller Disco and Pajama Party, featuring host Richard Dawson joined also by Wayland Flowers and Madame, Donna Summer, Sister Sledge, Ruth Buzzi, et al, not to mention Hugh Hefner himself and (ulp!) Dorothy Stratten. In 1978, their their anthemic "I Am What I Am" was used in the movie Thank God It's Friday.
Now, I was 12 when The Village People hit, and I'm here to tell you something unbelievable, but true. People didn't necessarily know it was a "gay" thing. And that is true to this day. For a while there, Trump was appropriating "Y.M.C.A." and "Macho Man" at his campaign events, even dancing and singing along with the songs. Do you think for a second that he would do this if it was registering with him -- or all of those evangelical supporters -- on ANY level that the song was strongly identified with gay culture? When I talk about The Village People's big moment (1977-79) with "sophisticated" friends and acquaintances (i.e., one's who grew up in major cities), they regard what I tell them with disbelief, but I assure you it's true. The Village People's act was at the very least ambiguous. The entire thing was coded. Some people understood it, others didn't. Not only is gayness not mentioned in the songs, it wasn't articulated on television (with all of its standards and practices restrictions), or in mainstream press coverage. Very few people were "out" publicly back then. The ones you knew about were, like, Truman Capote, and James Baldwin. To confuse things further, the ignorance of the public was such that the image most people had in their head of a gay man was a nance stereotype, a weak, effeminate individual, the sort of chap who worked as a florist or an interior decorator. The Village People danced sexy, but their machismo didn't read as something Mr. and Mrs. America understood as "gay". How do you think this act had those monster hits? The majority of the public would have disapproved of this act completely had they not been naive about it, or if they possessed the grey cells to work out the simple math that Greenwich Village + San Francisco + gymnasiums + all-male crews on long sea journeys = gay.
I'm not saying NO ONE knew. For example, my best friend knew. He was the one who explained what the act was about to me. It's also how I found out what gayness was in the first place! (I remind you that I was a 12 year old working class kid in New England and it was 1977. I'd honestly never heard of it). My friend wasn't any more sophisticated than me, but he did have a teenage sister who was quite a bit older, and I'm guessing she was the one who put him wise. Otherwise, like most of the grown-ups I knew, we just thought the Village People's act was a funny gimmick. Kids especially enjoyed the visual aspect of the group. The guys looked just like our toys and Halloween costumes! Cowboys, Indians, army men?
With the less campy single "Go West" (1979), The Village People slid down to #45 in the charts. And this was the moment that both the disco fad and The Village People began to tumble. Well do I recall the release of their 1980 musical film Can't Stop the Music, directed by none other than Nancy Walker and featuring such once and future stars as Valerie Perrine, Caitlyn Jenner (then still Bruce), Steve Guttenberg, Paul Sand, Tammy Grimes, June Havoc, Barbara Rush, and Marilyn Sokol. It was a significant moment because I vividly recall my feeling at the time that The Village People were already sort of over, the public was already tired of them and their gimmick. It also pretty much earned the bad reviews. The title song from the film didn't even crack the hot 100.
1980 was a weird year -- many similar films were released around the same time, Flash Gordon, with music by Queen, and Xanadu with Olivia Newton-John and Electric Light Orchestra. It all seemed kind of behind the curve, the public had moved on to different things. The fact that Victor Willis, author and singer of their catchiest songs, had left The Village People prior to the making of Can't Stop the Music also helps explain its anemic success at the time. Willis would later return to the group, and they continued to release new music and to have success internationally and on the dance charts and so forth over the decades. Jacques Morali died of AIDS-related causes at age 44. And obviously, many more people know the whole story about the group now than was the case all those decades ago, even if some apparently remain in the dark.
For more on show biz history, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.
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