Village People in Standoff Over 'Y.M.C.A.' Being a Queer Anthem

It is beginning to be like something out of "The Real Housewives of Greenwich Village."

That is the fight developing between two of the Village People – lead singer Victor Willis and ex-member David Hodo, who was the Construction Worker during the group's heyday in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Last week Willis claimed on Facebook that "The song is not really a gay anthem... this must stop because it is damaging to the song." Hodo was quick to disagree.

"Willis explained that when he wrote 'Y.M.C.A.' he had no idea it was seen as 'a hang out for gays,'" according to the music website msdwn.com. He explained, "I wrote 'Y.M.C.A.' about things I knew about the Y in urban areas like San Francisco – swimming, basketball, track, and affordable food and rooms. When I say, 'hang out with all the boys,' it simply referred to 1970s Black slang for men hanging out together for sports, gambling, or whatever. There's nothing gay about that." He added, "So, if 'Y.M.C.A.' is considered a gay anthem because some YMCAs were once used for illicit activity, that assumption is completely misguided."

What's more problematic is that Willis claims calling it so is "harmful" to the song, a statement that borders on the homophobic. He is even going as far as to have his wife, a lawyer of the most litigious type, threatening a law suit to anyone who claims it is, as if calling it "a gay anthem" is some sort of defamation.

Perhaps Victor should educate his wife about the group's beginnings, which started when gay French record producer Jacques Morali came up with an idea in 1978 of having recognizable Greenwich Village types he saw on the streets and in the West Side bars be assembled as the personnel of a new a music group. They weren't out of a Western town from some John Ford movie, but Greenwich Village in 1976, which was (along with San Francisco's Castro Street) an epicenter of queer culture at the time.

Nor did Morali pick individuals based on their talents; he picked men who fit archetypes of American masculinity. Morali mined that sensibility, and the Village People – a cheeky in-joke of a group if there ever was one – was born. Their big hit "Y.M.C.A.," in which the group says "you can hang out with all the boys," followed. While Willis claims otherwise, the genesis of that line is said to have come when one of the group's members, Randy Jones, repeatedly took Morali along to the Y.M.C.A. in Chelsea, just up 7th Avenue from the Village, where the producer delighted in seeing many gay porn stars working out in the gym. And there's the music video itself...