The Village uprising
The Village People haven't always been one happily family, explains the original Indian Felipe Rose to John Meagher before the band comes to town thirty years after these disco legends first strutted their stuff
STILL GOING STRONG: The band notch up about 280 gigs a year
Friday September 19 2008
Felipe Rose -- the Native American musician who wears the Indian regalia in The Village People -- is on autopilot. He's sleeping his way through this interview -- saying very little of note and making breathtakingly lame jokes about Ireland and our fondness for alcohol: "We love to drink and you guys sure know a thing or two about that!"
But there's one thing that will make Felipe sit up and take notice, and that's mention of Victor Willis, the original Village People frontman.
Willis used to don the policeman's uniform and has been in plenty of trouble with real-life policemen for more than 30 years, thanks to a life lived on the edge.
The Indian and the cop don't get on. Not even close. They haven't seen each other in years and Felipe Rose would rather not set eyes on his old bandmate again.
"Even as we speak, he's still out there, getting up to no good," he says, darkly. "He's done nothing good with his life -- he's arrested time and time and again. I hear that he's trying to put a book out to trash us. He makes so much money from all those Village People royalties, but he can't leave us alone. He's just a bitter old man."
For a band that helped define the disco sound of the late 1970s and whose tunes were both throwaway and insanely catchy, it's quite
striking that some of the original members feel such enmity for each other. Theirs is the sort of hatred more likely among heavy rockers, rather than good-time disco guys.
It's one of pop's lesser-known stories -- The Village People, purveyors of the ultimate party music -- found very little time to enjoy their success together.
"Of course it makes me sad," Felipe says. "It would have been great if we could have got on together, but that wasn't to be. All he does is talk badly of us. That is, when he's not in prison."
He clearly has little sympathy for a man he repeatedly refers to as "the ex-lead singer" and who has had his life ravaged through drug use.
But Felipe -- speaking to Day & Night from his home in New York -- isn't finished there. "And that other damn member, Randy Jones -- the cowboy ... don't even get me started on him. You know, he actually calls himself 'The One, the Only and Original Cowboy' -- can you believe it? Why doesn't he hang up his Stetson and do something else with his life? He hasn't even been in the Village People for 20 years."
Cat claws at dawn. "I was saying to David -- he plays the construction worker, by the way -- that I've taken my gloves off when it comes to those two. I won't defend either of them any more."
It seems that there was trouble in The Village People camp from day one. "The ex-lead singer almost single handedly destroyed the group in its early days as a result of his drug and drink abuse and for that reason he had to go."
The Village People were a manufactured outfit, more panto package than pop group. They were moulded by French producers Henri Bololo and Jaques Morali, who found Willis -- son of a Baptist pastor -- singing in a dive club in Manhattan.
The impresarios were instantly struck and Willis duly transferred to Casablanca studios (then of Donna Summer fame) to record a debut album with session musicians and background singers, none of whom were members of the band-to-be.
Not until Morali went to a gay disco called Les Mouches in Greenwich Village did the notion occur to combine his studio tapes with what he beheld: a floorshow of macho homosexual stereotypes in theme fancy dress.
Morali, himself gay, spotted a professional dancer, Felipe Rose, shaking his stuff in an Indian headdress with bells on his toes, and the idea dawned: a troupe of brazen homosexual fantasy figures singing hit tunes aimed at a gay audience. Morali put out an advertisement seeking: "Gay singers and dancers, very good looking and with moustaches".
Rose -- whose father, a Lakota Sioux high-beam welder, moved to New York from near the site of the Wounded Knee massacre, and whose mother was a Puerto Rican Jehovah's Witness and dancer at the Copacabana Club -- was installed as a Native American chief.
Then auditions of the moustachioed thousands heeding Morali's call began. Alex Briley left a dancing troupe to join as the GI/Sailor. A roller-skating fire-eater, David Hodo, became the construction worker. Glenn Hughes, a toll collector in a booth at the entrance to Brooklyn-Battery tunnel became the leatherman/biker, a role he fulfilled in real life. Television actor Randy Jones was appointed cowboy and the front man, Willis, would be a cop. All came from Greenwich Village and their name was obvious.
"I was excited about the group," Felipe says today. "So what if it was manufactured -- Jaques and Henri knew they were on to something special."
Today three of the originals -- Rose, Briley and Hodo -- continue to keep the Village People roadshow active. The trio have, apart from a two-year break, never stopped. They notch up around 280 gigs a year, often churning out multiple shows over the same evening. Felipe is philosophical about life on the road: "I'm often asked if I get bored playing the same songs night after night and the truth is I can't be because without those songs we wouldn't be here today."
Those songs -- In The Navy, Go West, and of course, YMCA -- form the backbone of the reconstituted Village People show today. "I think we would get bottled off stage if we didn't play those songs," he chuckles.
YMCA remains a wedding party staple as well as the ultimate gay anthem. It is the official song at the Yankees baseball stadium in New York -- one of the most quintessentially hetero environments in the US.
"The song is a phenomenon," he says, not unreasonably. "And yet it's such a mindless song. You know, it was a filler for the Cruisin' album. It was knocked out over a lunchtime.
"When I first heard it, I thought it was fun, but had no idea it was going to have the impact it did. It continues to make the ex-lead singer an awful lot of money every year. People talk about it being this big gay thing, but I see it as a straight-up song about the Young Men's Christian Association. And the guy who wrote it wasn't gay."
One of the strange things about this most camp of bands is that two of the original members -- Willis and Hughes, who died of cancer in 2001 -- were straight. "It did surprise people when they found out because we were all so flamboyant on stage, but those guys sure loved the women."
Felipe Rose -- whose latter life has been heavily involved in projects concerning Native Americans -- believes The Village People can last another 10 years.
"None of us are getting any younger, but as long as there's still an audience out there, we'll play for them."
He admits that while the three original members and the three comparative newcomers have tried to write fresh material, nothing penned has stood up to the songs that made them famous 30 years ago.
"We've had to hold our hands up and realise that we can't recapture a moment and it just is not possible for us to write songs like that again," he says. "Some musicians might find it boring to play the same old songs over and over, but I see it as a celebration.
"And I've never been as content as I am now. Life on the road is good -- I really care about the other five guys. It feels like a big family, and that's certainly something I couldn't have said before.
"Are you listening, Mr Willis?" n
The Village People play Tripod, Dublin, on Sunday, September 21 (€53-€58).
- John Meagher
