Stuff You Should KnowThe Village People were a smash hit singing group that came and went in under two years. Then other people performed under that name for several decades. This is their story.
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Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And when you put us all together, well things get pretty great. How's it going, man.
It's going great.
I've been listening to The Village People off and on all day.
Yeah, same here and what We're supposed to both come in. Sorry, Chuck, did you pick this because I cannot imagine that you weren't a cute little seven year old Village People fan. True, So which one did you identify with the most?
Well?
I've told this story before because I posted it on Instagram way back when I talked about it. But I still have a crayon drawing of the Village People because I would sit around and play Cruising the record Cruising okay, their third album, their third album, but the one with YMCA and I Believe in the Navy and like most of their big hits outside of my favorite Village People song, which is of course Macho Man Sure such a good song, And I would just sit around and listen to Cruising and stare at that record cover of those guys you know on the Horse and the most Cycle, the motorcycle and the Bulldozer, and like I would see them on American Bandstand and Solid Gold and the early music videos, and I would just I thought they were the coolest, most awesome dudes ever in the world. And I would sit around and draw crayon pictures of them, and I still have one of them.
Maybe I'll pint it on Instagram.
I'm sort of always laughed years later that like, who knows what my peer parents were thinking. And we'll get into the you know, whether or not village people count or were in fact a gay band. But I imagine at the time, in the early to mid seventies, with Southern Baptist parents, they either weren't aware of that or were probably pretty like worried about their son when they needn't be, because either way it would have been fine.
Yeah, well put man, you know what I'm saying.
But back in the seventies, in the in the rural, not rural, but in a suburban, conservative South, I'm I'm sure if they didn't, if they did know what was going on, they're probably like, have you seen these Crown pictures?
Like he drew Little counselor got in Touch.
I drew literal like pancake boobies on the biker Guy because I didn't know how to draw like a bear chest correctly.
Yeah hey that worked.
Yeah, So anyway, I'll either scroll through my Insta or maybe I'll figure out how to pin stuff.
But definitely.
We're talking about village people technically not the village people. It's just sort of one of those things like Eagles or hall of Oates, where you just you come to be known by that name even though that's not your real name.
Yes, like Edith Burkell and New Bohemians.
Oh, is that what it is? It's not the New Bohemians.
Yeah. For some reason, I've always had this memory of her correcting David Letterman on Letterman. It's funny in like nineteen ninety or something like that. I don't know why it stuck with me, but I always she got the point across.
Sure, And Indigo Girls is the other one. They're not the Indigo Girls.
Yeah. I don't even say that to their face. They will they will beat you up.
Well, if you say Hall of Notes to Daryl Hall, he gets pretty salty. He's like, we were.
Not hall of Oates.
We never were.
Oh really what were they?
Look at the the Hall and now every single album it's Darryl holland John Oates.
They were never Hollan Oates.
And it just does he really get salty about that because they are much much greater things to be upset about that.
I've seen him a little salty, but I think it's largely because they don't like each other.
Man, why are you telling me all that?
Sorry?
I want Daryl hall and and John Notes to be like just the best guys ever.
You want to be like, it's like wow or dare I say, Josh?
And I'm not participating for the rest of this episode, but I have to chew on some stuff.
All right, let's talk Village People.
Yeah. Actually, one of the things that stood out to me is this is like the improved version of our Milli Vanilli episode, because one thing I didn't realize is that the Village People were like a manufactured band and they were the brain child I guess collectively yea of Jacques morale In Henrie Belolo, who are both Moroccan born French Minten Yeah, who I guess separately kind of got into the music industry by their own grit and determination and didn't really know each other at first. They had their own I think, starting in the fifties and sixties, had their own careers that they were trying to build, and eventually in the seventies they came together. Henri Bololo was kind of like the brains the producer that kind of type. Jacques Moraley was more he was a producer as well, but more the hands on, creative type of producer. And when they came together, some sparks flew even before the village people were ever around.
Yeah, there's no way to say this without sounding completely like kind of stuck up.
But I've been listening to a lot of French music lately.
Oh yeah, yeah, there's I mean, if you're in the right mood there, if you look up like eighties sort of new wave, but French music, their version, it is really really awesome stuff.
Nice. I will check that out.
Highly recommended. So yeah, they were, like you said they were, had made a name for themselves independently, I believe in nineteen seventy three, Belolo set up Can't Stop Productions a couple of years later.
That's a great name, by the way. Oh yeah, it's just stuck out to me all day.
Oh yeah, and I remember seeing that little logo like Can't Stop the Music. I think that was the name of the movie, right.
Yeah. I didn't put those two together, actually, don't just know.
But they eventually met up in the United States and their first project and release was a real banger. You know, the song Brazil from the nineteen thirties, the one from the movie Brazil. They took that and updated it with a female trio called the Richie Family as a disco song, and it is, like I said, it's a real banger, kind of a classic disco song.
Yes, but it was disco before disco actually existed. So a lot of people kind of credit these two is really helping lay the foundation for disco. It was that that period, right before disco became a thing. So it was a weird transition between like, what's the guy's name, Percy.
Fledge?
Is it Percy Faith in his orchestra? Okay, the transition between Percy Faith and and John Travolta. This is like that that slice of music, lots of strings, kind of salsa based, lots of like chorus and vocals. It was. It actually was up for the nineteen seventy six Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and lost to The Hustle if that gets it a cross, So like the Hustle is like proto disco. Yeah, so was this version of Brazil. And it's right before disco became a thing.
Yeah, Like on the matter of months though probably.
Right, Yeah, I would say that, yeah, okay, I.
Mean losing to the hustle. There's no there's no shame.
There, no, not at all.
So they had this pretty good hit with Brazil again. I recommend you check it out. It's and listen to all these songs are all great. Can't Stop Productions was like, all right, listen, we need we you know, back then they would just go from thing to thing because it's not like you can ride out something like the Richie Family forever, so they're always looking for the next new thing. In seventy seven, they were hanging out in Greenwich Village, New York, which then, as it is now, is a very friendly community for especially gay men. Moraley was gay, but Belolo was not. But they were hanging out there. They were going to disco's, they were going to bars and stuff, and they started to see these guys in these clubs that were dressed up as these these sort of macho American stereo types that they grew up watching on you know, American TV and American movies. And this is a direct quote from Blolo. Dave is encouraging me to read it with a French accent. I'm not sure about that, but I'll try this from Billboard magazine. We saw different types of characters and bars. That's how we decided to cleate a group that's will represent different characters of the American male. As we had the idea in the village, we decided to call the group the Village People.
Simple.
That was a great pepulo peza.
Yeah, that was like they saw these guys in bars fitting these sort of archetypes or stereotypes of what they thought like a macho American man was, and they're like, hey, this is like a concept right here, right in front of us.
Yeah, And actually it's possible that it was one specific guy. They saw, Philippe Rose, Felipe Rose, who was known as the Indian, who dressed up as a Native American Indian around Greenwich Village very flamboyantly because he was a Native American his father on his father's side, he was Mescalero, Apache, Lakota, and Cherokee, which is like that's the trifecta, and he was very proud of it. So he dressed up in like moccasins and fringe leather vests and all that kind of thing, and they saw him and that in addition to going to bars like the mind Shaft, which was a BDSM gay club, and then seeing other people kind of dress up. That's where they put the whole thing together. And Dave made a really good point here that that whole concept of dressing people up as like stereotypical American male, macho like image images essentially that an American producer probably would have been like, that's not a great idea, it's kind of lame. But these guys were like looking at America from the outside in, and I think, like you kind of alluded to, they were exposed to this like their whole lives. This is like what they were fed through American movies and TV. So to them, they were like, this is amazing, what a great idea, Like we want to celebrate this American macho male and that's where the village people came from.
Yeah, I'm not so sure about that part, but I respect Dave's opinion. If you agree with.
Him, I do agree with him on that.
I respect you.
I'm going with Dave on this.
I bet they're American producers that are like, oh God, that's right there in front of my face, can't believe it, and think.
Of Hey, yeah, in hindsight.
So Moroley started writing songs. You know, like you said, they were inspired by Felipe Rose. I don't think you said. He was basically kicked out of his house because he came out as gay. So he was hanging out in the village, working in bars and stuff. The Richie family was, you know, they were trying to eke a little, trying to ring that thing dry from the Richie family. And they were getting a new album together. They needed some backup singers, and someone said, hey, there's this guy. He's on Broadway right now in the Whiz. His name is Victor Willis. The guy can really sing, It's got a lot of personality, can dance a little bit. You should bring him in here as a backup singer. Roley brought him into the studio and it was like, dude, you are a star, so we need to get you to record these other songs we've written that. There were no Village people yet, but in nineteen seventy seven he cut their very first disco hit. And you'll see a lot of parentheticals because that was the time. But this is called San Francisco parentheses.
You got me another good song.
So, yeah, Victor Willis was the first. This is long before Felipe Rose came along, but after they had seen Felipe Rose, right, so they were inspired to create the village people. But Victor Willis was really the only village person at the time. Everybody else was just studio session musicians and singers and stuff like that, right, So that worked fine when they cut that first album, which I think was like four songs or something like that, and they had that hit with San Francisco You Really Got Me. And with that hit, they're like, okay, you got Me San Francisco. Yeah, which is funny because, as we'll see later on, Victor Willis would become a fugitive from the law and he would finally be arrested in San Francisco. So he was so but he was the village people. And now that San Francisco Got Me was a hit, like apparently an international club hit, they needed more people, and so they started looking for other village people and the first one they recruited was Felipe Rose, appropriately enough, because apparently he was unknowingly the inspiration for the whole thing.
Right, Funny enough, they were San Francisco You Got Me was big in Australia. As you'll see, that's become a recurring thing. It seems like Australians love the Village People. Yeah, so I'm curious to hear from them that if you look at that first album cover, it is not the Village People. And I don't even think Victor Willis is on the cover. It's just it's a bunch of guys. There is a guy wearing a Native American headdress, but I don't think it's Felipe Rose, No, none of them. There's a flannel shirt, hard hat guy, and there is a biker. But that's it, just those three sort of village people that we went on to know and love. Everyone else is just a bunch of guys stand around in T shirts looking tough with a motorcycle and frame.
Yeah. I mean, so they had the concept, they just didn't have the people yet. So they're slowly starting to assemble this. Now they have Victor Willis and Felipe Rose. They've got the first two and they actually put an ad in the paper, I would guess the Village Voice looking for gay men, singers and dancers with mustaches to basically audition for the roles in this band, not like can you play the bass? Can you? Can you play the drums? But do you have a mustache? And are you good looking? And a singer and dancer? And they got from what I saw like thousands of replies.
Yeah, this was They were never a band. It was always just supposed to be a singing group, and they did. I believe Felipe or I'm sorry. Glenn Hughes, who was the biker. He worked at the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel collecting tolls, saw the ad. By his memory, the ad said seeking gay singers and dancers, very good looking and with mustaches.
Probably wasn't hard to find at that time.
Well, all his friends were like, Glenn, that's you, buddy, Like you need to get in there.
Yeah, So Glenn Hughes became the village people's leather man, which apparently was not a stretch for him. I think he was already in the leather at the time, so he became the leatherman slash biker, right.
That's right. He was the third. I think.
The second one to join up was Alex Briley, who came at Victor Willis's recommendation. He was the original sort of stereotype for him was he was the athlete, but then they changed that pretty quickly to the army guy. He was the gi and also the Navy sailor, so he kind of crossed over the different arm services, I guess, yes.
And then another guy who responded to the ad was David Hodo. He had just gotten done with the musical about the Grand Old Opry and basically went out for the cowboy. They're like, nope, you're a construction worker. Through and through, a guy named Randy Jones became the cowboy, and so you had Victor Willis, Felipe Rose, Alex Bridley, Randy Jones, David Hodo, and Glenn Hughes, which, by the way, I realized earlier today that I could rattle off the names of the original village people now. But that's who the village people were at first. And I say we take a break, because now we've got this murderer's row of mustachioed, generally gay guys ready to hit the disco scene and they're about to blow up.
All right, so we're back. We have our village people assembled. I think we failed to mention earlier that Dick Clark and American Bandstan American Bandstand. The TV show had already sort of reached out after they had San Francisco You Got Me as a hit, but they were like, there is no village people yet, we can't just you know, send one guy out there. So they got these other guys together. In December of nineteen seventy seven, they appeared for the first time on American Bandstand. I could not, for the life of me find this exact performance. Oh yeah, no, I couldn't find it anywhere. I mean they were on quite a few times, but I never saw the one from seventy seven somehow. But that was their American you know, TV debut and debut of the world when they sang San Francisco or I guess lip SYNCD and and the song in Hollywood parentheses everybody is a star.
Yep, And you're right, pentheses where a thing back then? I just died in your arms tonight?
Is that a real one?
Yeah?
I remember we talked about it a few weeks ago, that cutting crew song.
I just didn't know if you fooled me then or not.
No, no, no, it's it's legit. Have you been walking around wondering that?
Yeah for three weeks.
So we're onto your favorite song, Chuck, which I agree. I think it's the best Village People song. Macho Man. Yeah, and that was in their second album. So their first album, like you said, was called Village People. It came out in nineteen seventy seven. Their second album came out in nineteen seventy eight, and that was the one. It was. The album was called Macho Man, and the big single from it was called Macho Man as well.
Is it okay if we read some of the lyrics to some of these songs?
Yes, I saved them too, Oh you did, Okay? I think you should sing them.
Not going to sing them, okay, though it might be hard not to.
And I'm not going to read them all because there's that intro, that great intro to Macho Man, when they're going, you know, body, body, and he's going to want to feel my body, such a thrill, my body, want to touch my body. That's all that long intro. And then here here's some of the words to the verse. Every man wants to be a macho Macho man, to have the kind of body always in demand, jogging in the mornings, go man, go, workouts in the health spa, muscles grow, you can tell a macho man. He has a funky walk. His Western shirts and leather always looks so boss punky with his body. He's a king. Call him mister Ego. Dig his chains. Every man ought to be a macho macho man to live a life of freedom. MACHOs make a stand, have your own lifestyle and ideals, possess the strength of confidence. That's the skill.
But it's so if you dig into that last bit, this song goes from essentially just total body worship and like working out at the spa and all that stuff and however, but he wants to be a macho man to essentially like that. The last verse is about gay liberation and basically coming out of the closet, it sounds.
Have your own lifestyles and ideals possessed the strength of confidence. Yeah, say exactly.
Yeah. So it really takes like a sudden turn there because it's like the most superficial vein song of all time, and then it suddenly like kind of is a shout out for gay liberation. Yeah, this was like it's kind of tough to wrap your head around here in twenty twenty four. Sadly, it's not as tough as it should be, but it's still tough to wrap your head around just how big of a deal it was for men to be like on stage singing songs gay like I'm gay everybody, There's just no question about it. I'm a gay person.
Yeah.
That was a big, big deal at the time. And then to sing about it, yeah, and to sing about how that was a good thing that was that was really daring and it was really it's neat that they did that. Likes it just should not go unnoticed or mentioned, and it's hard to overstate what a big deal it was. And then it's even harder to overstate how huge of a hit Macho Man was for the village people.
Yeah, I mean little seven year old Chuck in Stone Mountain, Georgia dancing around in the shower to that song. Yeah, Like it truly reached every corner if that was what was going on. They went out on the road, which is not something that a lot of disco acts did that. Disco wasn't known as a great like sort of live touring thing.
Well, it was, like we talked about in our Disco episode, it was a really anonymous type of music, like you might have never see a picture of the person who who is your favorite you know, who sang your favorite song at the time.
Yeah, so, you know, there were some package things here and there, but generally going on the road as a disco act wasn't a very big thing to do, but the Village People did it. From the store, Art and Dave dug up the thing from the Washington Post in seventy nine that said that their first tour had you know, usual stage and equipment problems, but also the group was forced to endure all manner of verbal and physical abuse from the audience, which means that people were either dragged there or went there to you know, to boo to boo like a hate watch.
Yeah, which is crazy. It is crazy, But I mean we're talking nineteen seventy nine, you know.
I guess so, but like to spend your six bucks or whatever to like, Hey, We're going to go down to Madison Square Garden and boo the Village people. I don't know, I guess that was a thing.
Yeah, I'm sure that was a thing, but I think more often than not they were just loved. I read a quote from Glenn Hughes, the leather Man, who said he basically had to beat back women, Yeah, who wanted to sleep with him.
And he's like, he's like, I got a headache.
Yeah, he said, I have a headache. So apparently some people just didn't get it, some people didn't care, other people did get it. It cared one way or another. But they were huge. I think for the most part, people were either not reading into it or just look like purposefully being obtuse and looking past it. I'm not sure, but they were enormous. You mentioned Madison Square Garden. They definitely played Madison Square Garden. They were in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in nineteen seventy eight. They were huge. But if you look back on when they were huge, it apparently lasted twenty two months, less than two years, but they were at the top of the heap during that time.
Yeah, because you know disco and again, like Josh mentioned, we had one of our favorite episodes is on Disco many years ago.
Yeah, it was great.
It was you know, not a flash in the pan, but it was a pretty brief stay. Yeah.
You know, I guess we should get into this whole notion of whether or not village people were you know, a quote gay group end quote. Because that's always been a question, Like, you know, when I was a kid, I believe, you know, people finally started telling me, like, you know, those guys are all gay, and I don't know if it was I'm not sure how common knowledge because pre Internet, any of the real truth was. Back then, Randy Jones, who was the Cowboy, said, we didn't start as a gay group, and not everyone in the group was gay. That's an incorrect notion. So much of our music was played in black, Latin and gay underground clubs, though that's where the first Village People album found its initial audience. Victor Willis, who you know, to a lot of people, kind of was and is the Village People because he was the super, super talented Broadway guy. He was the guy that co wrote a lot of their big songs. Was not just sort of a backup singer.
He was the cop.
He was the cop as the front man, and he was not gay. He was, in fact, for four years married to Felicia at the time, Felicia airs Allen, who would later become Felicia Rashad, the wife on The Cosby Show, is what she's most well known for. But they were in the Whiz together on Broadway and then eventually got together to make music with Moraley. I think they got together to write a concept album for her called Josephine Superstar about the life of Josephine Baker, which I haven't heard, but I'm going to try and find that.
If it's in French, it's really going to knock your socks off.
Yeah, but so Victor Willis was not gay. He was the frontman and lyricist, but like they had songs about Fire Island and San Francisco and Key West, Greenwich Village and Key West, and if you look at the lyrics, like it's pretty clear that like this stuff was either coded for gay or just basically like, if you don't know what we're talking about, then you're pretty dense.
But if you were even remotely hip and you read some of the contemporary or contemporaneous articles on them, like all the journalists wanted to know, like are you gay? Right? I read a New Music Express article from like, I think nineteen seventy eight, and the guy's asking Randy Jones the Cowboys, like are you a gay group? And apparently Randy Jones was sick of hearing this at the time. Yeah, it was barely containing his anger, and he's like, why does it matter. He's like, we're not a gay group or a disco group. Right. Over time, they definitely evolved into a gay group. I think it. I think it kind of occurred to them, like what a huge impact they were having just by basically being ambassadors of gayness to the rest of the world and showing everybody, like, you like our music, you know, like us too. Yeah, maybe like the gay dude that you work.
With exactly, And that's what I think.
Victor Willis says, as the straight lead singer, and this is touching on YMCA, which we'll get into, but he said, you know, I wrote those lyrics, so technically it's not a gay song because I'm not gay and I wrote it, but I never had any qualms that it was embraced by the gay community.
Yeah, he's like, nothing, there's anything wrong with that.
Yeah, basically.
So on the other hand, the Hodo the construction worker says, I mean, look at us, we were a gay group. The song was written to celebrate gay men at the YMCA was it, Yes, absolutely, and gay people loved it. YMCA was you know, is the song I think Macho Man is a much better song, but YMCA is became part of the cultural zeitgeist, like forever.
Yeah, I saw somewhere I couldn't find it, but that's it's in a time capsule in orbit around Earth right now. It was included in like a bunch of songs that was sent out into space.
Oh yeah, for sure it was.
Yeah, it was a huge hit. Like that's just yeah, it's part of American culture, I guess international culture really. But the idea behind it is that Randy Jones the Cowboy, when he moved to New York in nineteen seventy five, one of the first things he did was join the YMCA on West twenty third Street in Manhattan, which became the inspiration for song YMCA because he took Jacques Morale to the YMCA with him to work out with some of his buddies, who apparently were gay adult film stars, and Jacques Moraley was just blown away that there was this place. Yeah, it's like this secret hidden gay oasis. I'm the cheap right, Like it costs almost no money to not only like work out there, but get a room there.
You'd stay there at the time, So apparently he.
Was just starstruck at the whole idea and loved going to the YMCA and decided to write a song about it. So he wrote the Bones of YMCA, and then Victor Willis came in and wrote kind of the rest of it. But the whole idea behind YMCA is that it was an ode to just the gay experience at YMCA. And Victor Willis, though, he wrote a lyric that I hadn't noticed until I was listening to it yesterday where he's talking about how just he arrived in this new city and he was very unhappy about being there. Huh, he said, I thought the whole world was so jive. I noticed so jive, Like he just didn't like anything. He thought the whole world was drive until he discovered the YMCA and realized that this place is awesome and amazing, and the world in term was pretty amazing too. I had never heard that lyric before noticed it, and when I did, I was just I just thought that was so great.
That's a great lyric.
If you look at the original music video, it has a close up shot of the McBurnie YMCA at the very beginning there on what's twenty third, and it's basically just a video of them dancing in the street outside of it.
As far as.
The the YMCA hand gestures, they did not create that. They if you if you look at that video and basically any performance of them doing it on the Why, like you know, it builds.
Up, it's funny and they go they.
Throw their arms up on why. Yeah, And what they're doing is they were just kind of throwing their arms up in unison as like a dance move, but it sort of looked like a why. And as Randy Jones tells it, that it was a live performance where some of the audience like just started doing the you know, the why, and then the MCA and they the audience sort of started it.
Yeah. They so they when they threw their arms up, the audience mistook that is like the beginning of them spelling out why with their arms, and they took it from there. And so some kids on American Bandstand are the ones who actually came up with the YMCA dance.
Yeah, And Hodo said, here's the quote. When I saw the movements, I thought, wow, this is so stupid. Then everyone in America started doing it, and I thought, wow, this is so brilliant.
Yeah, that's pretty awesome, and the YMCA itself apparently, remember this is not a time where everybody's like, hey, kay is great. The YMCA was like, you can't use our name like that, right, it's trademarked, and I guess got in touch with Cosablanco Records, which was producing The Village People at the time, and it just petered out. It just went nowhere. They ultimately decided not to I think they kind of concluded it was actually way better press to just leave it as is, and that they risk getting terrible press for suing the Village People for singing how great YMCA is. So yeah, they just left it.
I think in the movie version, it will be like the head of the YMCA is on the phone to the record company, and right before he goes to tell them that he wants to cease and desist letter drawn up, some kid, you know, some low level worker bust in the room and goes boss and he comes up with the phone memberships are through the roof, and then it just you know, never mind, this is all good.
Yeah, he's a wrong number.
So before we break, we'll talk quickly about the fact that you cannot go to a baseball game anymore. Without hearing YMCA like a Major League Baseball game, especially the young, especially the Yankees that all started at spring training in Tampa. I'm not sure if the Yankees are still there, but that was their home at least at the time, and in nineteen ninety six. This did not happen in the seventies. It was in the mid nineties. Top of the fifth inning, the grounds crew came out to take care of the infield like they always do midway through the game, and they broke into the YMCA, you know, spelling out those letters as the song played, and everybody thought it was the best thing ever. And that's how it was born. It was transferred to the new Yankee Stadium, and then it just became a thing.
Yeah. You can hear Larry David as Steinbrenner ordering them to take their YMCA dancers in the grounds crew. Yeah, but yeah, I saw a video of it from a Yankees game and they're just out there doing like the raking like normal, and then YMCA's playing like it's just playing as a song for the crowd, and then all of a sudden, when it gets to the YMCA, they just drop their rakes and start dancing and then when that's done, they pick up their res and go back to work. It's pretty great, did it You want to take that break you promised, Let's do it. Okay, Well we'll be right back, okay, Chuck. So we've hit Macho Man, Ymca, I think it's time for in the Navy, which was their last big hit, their last big single. It came out in nineteen seventy nine. That was on the album Cruising, which I guess YMCA.
Was as well, right, Yeah, that was the one that I had.
So that was the third album, second album in nineteen seventy eight. These guys released two albums in one year.
I thought it was all three? Was it just two two?
No, the first one was nineteen seventy seven Macho Man, and Cruising came out in nineteen seventy eight, and then there was whatever the third of Yeah, I guess it was three. There was no there's three singles, four albums, so I'm missing an album. But that album came out in nineteen seventy nine.
The fourth one, Yeah, that last album was Go West.
Yes, which, by the way, I always thought that was a pet Shop Boys song because it was on their album Vary from the nineties, and I was listening to Village People and came across that and was like, Oh, I've never realized it was a Village People's song.
Okay, I actually had this album too, now that I'm seeing the cover, because it's basically them on a well clearly a green screen, but like a tropical island setting, and that had In the Navy on it. So I think I'm just getting those confused because I had both records.
Sure, but can we read a little bit of in the Navy?
Yes, all right, here we go, Everybody in the Navy by Village People.
Where you can find.
Pleasure, search the world for treasure, learn science technology where you can begin to make your dreams all come true. On the land or on the sea, where you can learn to fly, play in sports and skin dive, study oceanography, sign up for the big band, or sit in the grandstand where your team and others meet. In the Navy And that's when it starts that great chorus.
And then weirdly, at the end of the song, they're singing like the in the Navy part over and over again, and Victor Willis is, I guess, singing about how he doesn't want to join the navy, and at one point he goes, but I'm afraid of the water. Yeah, And it's hilarious. It's like purposely funny. And that really kind of to me captures like what the village people were doing, Like they were balancing like really good disco music with high camp, right. I mean, these guys were dressed up as just macho stereotypes with like like genuinely funny lyrics sometimes, and I think that really kind of captured it for me. I saw that in that New Music Express article. The author said that they were experts at balancing what is deft and what is daft?
Can I read verse two?
Yeah? Oh yeah, sorry, I didn't know you were.
Oh no, that's right.
I think it works better to split it up to people can just fully absorb if you'd like adventure. Don't you wait to enter the recruiting office fast. Don't you hesitate. There is no need to wait. They're signing up new seamen fast. Maybe you're too young to join up today, but don't you worry about a thing, for I'm sure there will be always a good navy protecting the land and sea. And there's another line in the chorus about you know you can protect the motherland like it is a legit Navy recruitment song. Yeah, so much so that the Navy said, you know what, we'd like to actually use this for recruitment, and in exchange, we will let you film your music video aboard word like, we'll completely help you out and not charge you money.
We'll give you all the.
Navy semen that you want as background actors and stuff, and you can shoot it above aboard our active ship, the USS Reasoner. And that's what they did. They said, all right, great, we got a lot of production value here. You can use it as an official recruitment song.
Yeah. I mean that's just amazing that, Like, that's just crazy, but that's what happened. Apparently the Navy, any ship that had a closed circuit TV system got that video and I guess would play it over and over again, which I mean, luckily, it's a good song and it's an interesting video.
Yeah.
I was at a Dunkin Donuts the other day and they had the Super Bowl Ben Affleck Jennifer Lopez commercial on loop. Oh boy, and everyone inside we're completely out of their minds. It was an awful, awful scene, terrible place to.
Be Yeah, oh man.
So what I'm saying is I don't think that would have happened on board those Navy ships because it was a pretty good song.
Yeah, and I think their they're actual recruitment did like increase, supposedly while the song was out and being used. I think the American military was maybe like my parents. They weren't like, wait a minute, what we what song are we using and by what band as active recruitment for our US military?
Right?
But you know, I'm glad they were daft enough to not recognize that.
I guess they're right. Well, the other thing about it is I didn't see a single kind of gay innuendo lyric in that song. It was more just a gay group singing about being in the navy, which you know, coded for There are plenty of like gay dudes in the Navy secretly at the time, and I'm sure still are, but I'm sure it's much less secret. So I think that's more what it was than it being like a gay song. Sure, it was, like you said, a straight up, like like promotional song for the Navy.
Yeah, it doesn't say in the Navy you can maybe meet your next husband.
Right right, exactly? That got cut.
Yeah, got cut.
So that was, like we said, the last big hit. It was in nineteen seventy nine. And I alluded earlier. I think I just said out right, didn't even allude to it. They had a twenty two month run just Burned White Phosphorus Hot. During those twenty two months, I saw that both Madonna and Michael Jackson opened for them while they were on tour during this time. My guess would be nineteen seventy eight.
Wow, Michael Jackson surprises me.
Yeah, because he was already like famous from the Jackson Five. But I mean that goes to show you just how crazy huge the Village people were for a time.
Yeah, and this is.
Before Michael Jackson himself was like just the world's biggest star. Yeah, but yeah, it still says quite a bit. And they kept it going, they kept trying to go with it, and they released a movie, as you do said earlier, it's called Can't Stop the Music, Very bad. I can't even make it through the trailer. No, it's it's well known as like one of the worst movies of all time, just a disco fluffball that keeps hitting you in the head over and over again. Steve Gutenberg is the star. Yeah. The whole thing is kind of like a fictitious or fictionalized version of the story of how the Village People came to be. So he plays an americanized, fictionalized version of Jacques Morelli. His name is Jack Morrell in it, and again he roller skates everywhere and finally puts together this group that became the Village People. And it was so bad that apparently it inspired the Razzie Awards.
Right as the story goes, it was helped create the Razzies, and the inaugural Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay winner in nineteen eighty was a modest hit, though I do Australia.
I think that's where they made just the tiny amount of money that they made back, that's where they made it.
Back, I guess.
So I would love to hear from some Aussies of a certain age that could testify as to whether or not.
This is true.
I would love to hear that as well.
Yeah, so we'll find out.
Yeah, I think the guy, one of the guys who created the Razzies the Golden Raspberry Awards, which for those of you who don't know, it's like for the worst movies of the year. They hand these out. He went and saw a ninety nine cent double feature of Can't Stop the Music in Xana Do and wanted his money back. That's how bad he thought that movie with Xanadu was great. He clearly was not talking about Xana Do. He must have just completely been focused on Can't Stop the Music.
When was the last time he saw Xana Do?
Not that long ago? Okay, I love it. It's also got a great soundtrack too.
It does.
I mean, this was the time when they were making these big sort of movie musical like pop pop movie pop music movies.
Yeah, it was a strange.
Time, and everyone was on roller skates.
Yeah, you know, none of them had like were the best, like plotted, you know, and they were just were what they were, which was can we get someone into the movie theater that likes this music?
Yeah, and roller skates.
After Disco Village, people did try their hand at new Wave, because that's.
What came next. It did not work out.
Victor Willis left the band in nineteen seventy nine, and this is where the story gets you know, sad. I guess sad in one way or just a little confusing because Victor Willis, who a lot of people say, like, Victor Willis was Village People as the leader, as the original singer and songwriter, but he left had many many run ins with the law, awful drug problems, many warrants out and you know for like illegal firearms and cocaine possession and stuff like this kind of over and over and over, kept getting second chances from sympathetic judges that were like, hey, listen, you know you got a lot to offer the world, like can you get yourself clean? In the meantime, Ray Simpson Sugar Ray Simpson took over his lead singer and like for thirty years and all new Village People save Phelipe Rose and Alex Briley as the Indian and Gi toured and played sold out cruise ships and county fairs like all over the country in world for like thirty years without Victor Willis, they would do.
Two hundred and eighty shows a year.
Yeah, I mean very successful touring like nostalgia touring group, but without Victor Willis.
Yeah, And Victor Willis was not very happy about that. So he'd been again. You said, he had huge, huge self inflicted problems and run ins with the law. He was on an episode of America's Most Wanted once because he kept skipping bail. I know he At the same time, he definitely had and taken advantage of I can't stop the music productions. Early on, he'd only gotten less than two grand in album even back in nineteen seventy eight. That wasn't that much money for something that was just super megahits. He got one and a half percent of Village People royalties for the songs that he co wrote, co wrote, like he wrote significant portions of these songs, and like you said, to a lot of people, he was the village People. So there was a point in time where the Village People were playing the San Mateo County Fair and a mile away, Victor Willis was in the San Mateo County Jail. Probably could hear at least a little bit of it from miss Jail's cell, right, So it was pretty bad. And apparently the lowest point came in two thousand and eight when they got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Yeah, I look this up and apparently they've edited out anything, because I watched sort of the whole ceremony. But apparently Willis was in the crowd in that copy uniform, like yelling and screaming and talking about how it was fake and caused a disruption. So I don't know if they just got him out of there and did the ceremony, or if they edited the thing out. But it is not in the YouTube video. But what is evident when you're watching that YouTube video, no disrespect to these guys, but those aren't the village people. No, when you watch those guys are like, that's not those aren't the guys. You know, there's not the guys I drew in crayon.
It's kind of like if you see a guy dressed like the Incredible Hulk, you're like, that's not the Hulk. He represents the spirit of the Hulk, and in the same way, these people represented the spirit of the village people. They were there to accept the award in honor of the village people. I hope they realized that that's what they were doing.
They didn't even mention Willis, so like they were listing off names and no one said Victor Willis's name.
Yeah, there were a lot of sour grapes. Yeah, I think, and so Willis actually took can't stop productions to court, and in a really rare and usual turn, he he won big time. As a matter of fact, they went from giving him one point five percent of royalties to fifty percent totally. I didn't see did he get back royalties.
I don't know that. I was really curious about.
That because he just became probably something close to a billionaire overnight if they did, and then he this, this is this to me where I was like, I wish this hadn't happened. They also gave him full control over the Village People like name and likeness, the name of the band, the whole intellectual property that was the Village People.
You feel bad for the other guys, Yes, yeah.
That's so wrong. They kept the thing going for decades. And what did he do.
Well?
I mean, he started playing shows as Village People with you know, an entirely set of new guys behind him.
He fired them. He fired some of the original Village People, like you said, I think it was Alex Bridley and Llebe Rose and Ray. He was not the original, but he came in so closely after Victor Willis did. He was, for all intents and purposes, an original, but he was the.
Cop what are you gonna just say, all right now, put on the some the GI uniform.
Sure, and now Alex probably would be like, I'm the GI. It probably would have gone back and forth for a little while. He could have accommodated them. Instead, he was like, you guys are out, and I don't know that they had anything to do with the decision to, you know, mess over Victor Willis, and yet he took his angst and anger out on them, and I thought that that was wrong.
Yeah, I don't know enough of the story to judge it because I don't know how they treated him when he was down and out, So.
Well, that's the best way to judge his story.
I'm gonna just reserve my judgment on this one. I do think it's a shame that they couldn't get the original group back together for at least a show, because when I saw the the what I considered the not real village people performing online, was like, this isn't right. And then when I saw Victor Willis and those guys he got together, I was like, well this isn't right either, right. You know, Yes, I wanted I wanted all I wanted a gang back together. I wanted all my gay friends that I gazed upon and drew and crayon. I wanted them to reunite.
I'm with you, you you wouldn't be able to. Unfortunately, Glenn Hughes died of lung cancer and I think two thousand or something like that.
Yeah, is he the I believe he's the only one that passed.
Right, I believe so. But both I think on Reebololo and Jacques Morelli are both dead. I think Jacques died of AIDS sadly, and on Riebololo died in like the late two thousand and tens. I think, I'm not sure what, but yeah, So there are some village people out there still. You can go see him touring. You can see the Victor Willis version at the San Diego County Fair on July fourth, and if you happen to be in Santiago, Chile or Bogatah, Columbia, you can see them in May. All right, Okay, so that's your assignment stuff. You should know, Army. Go out and see the village people and let us know what you think. In the meantime, you can sit there and listen to listener mail.
Oh interesting, I was just making I was trying to verify really quickly if they were all alive, because that's important.
Yeah.
Sure, and I just saw here that and this is real time fact, everybody. Alex Briley supposedly that his brother was thought to be the falling man from the nine to eleven building.
No way, wow, nos man, that took a very strange turn here, that.
Did take And I believe that you're right. I believe that.
I believe that Glenn Hughes is the only one who's passed away. So the rest of the guys are still trying to trying to do stuff, is it. Randy Jones, He's He released a song in twenty seventeen that reached number forty two on the Billboard Dance Club Song Charts, So that's not too bad. Randy Jones was the cowboy, Yeah, cowboy.
So you never answered which one did you identify with the most, or did you identify with them as a group.
I don't know, Like identify as a is a weird word because I didn't like identify as and like I wanted, I think I'm one of those guys. But I think I thought that the biker was the coolest because like that leather man that mustache and that chopper, Like, I thought that was just the.
Coolest thing ever.
Dig those chains.
Yeah, so I think definitely the biker, you know. I mean that's the one who I drew with a little round boobies.
I always saw them pretty much collectively, but if any of them stood out to me, it was probably the construction worker.
Yeah, you're always a blue collar kind of guy.
I think it was this sirp a line jean jacket that always stood out to me. And then the mirror aviators.
Those Toledo roots. Oh yeah, the aviators.
Right, Okay, now everybody, it's time for listener mail.
I think, well, I don't have a listener because I thought we could just talk a little bit about our upcoming live shows. Oh yeah, let's do that as just sort of an in show announcement because we are hitting the road. This is a very fun show that you put together, and we've been getting emails from parents like, hey, can my kids come? Kids are always welcome at our shows. Sure, it's kind of a well it's a kid friendly topic in that it's not, you know, not kid friendly. But it's not about Barney the Dinosaur, you know.
It's not terrifying, though, it's pretty funny. If you're cool with your kids. Here in the S word occasionally you're fine.
Yeah, yeah, we have a cussword or two here and there, but it's not too bad. But we were going to be We're going to be in Medford, mass On May twenty ninth, then d C on the thirtieth, and New York on the thirty first. Then this summer we're going to hit the road in August on the seventh, eighth, the ninth to Chicago, Minneapolis, and Indianapolis for the first time. Very nice, and then we're going to wind it out in September on the fifth and seventh than Durham, North Carolina, and here in Atlanta. Tickets are moving pretty good in most cities, but we really want to make sure this first leg gets close to sold out.
Yeah, for sure, we would love that. If you would like to come see us, we would love that too. And you can get all the info you need. You can get links to ticket sites and all that kind of stuff by going to our website stuff you should know dot Com, clicking on the tour button, or you can also go to our link tree, link Tree slash sysk Live and it'll give you all the stuff you need to come see us, because again, we would love that, right, Chuck.
It's a good time.
Yeah yeah. And in the meantime, if you want to get in touch with this v email, you can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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