Las Vegas Weekly

January 9, 2009 · 10:30 AM

Disco icons The Village People celebrate 30 years of macho men at the Y-M-C-A

By Robin Leach

The Village People receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Photo: Angel Morales

I’ll confess! I want so much to head down to Primm Valley tomorrow night for The Village People concert. I’ve been an unabashed fan of “In the Navy,” “YMCA” and “Macho Man” ever since they propelled disco to the forefront 30 odd years ago. Their music is on both my iPhone and iPod.

Instead, I have to be on front-line, war-zone duty at the 2009 Adult Video Awards fighting through a sea of silicone to record the parade of pulchritude for posterity! Please click back here on Monday morning to see how successful I was!

So I picked up the phone to chat with singer David Hodo, the group’s construction worker who I knew from back in the early days of the wild and crazy Studio 54 nightclub in Manhattan. Alex Briley is the G.I. military representative, Ray Simpson is lead singer and the police officer, Felipe Rose is the American Indian, Eric Anzalone is the biker, and Jeff Olson is the cowboy.

Little wonder then that they all own the company Sixuvus, which acquired the rights to the name, characters, trademark and images for themselves! When French producer and composer Jacques Morali packaged the group and released their records with my late friend Neil Bogart of Casablanca Records, The Village People were an instant phenomenon with their own major movie Cant Stop the Music, which is still a cult film to this day, and they’d racked up 65 million in record sales by 1987.

They were honored in 1996 to be included in the world champion New York Yankees ticker tape parade in New York City, and Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne featured them on their New Year’s Eve wedding vow renewal TV special in 2003.

Even Madonna and Joan Rivers have appeared as opening acts for them, and Michael Jackson co-starred with them at the L.A. Palladium! The boys toured as far away as Japan and Australia, and this year they make their 29th trip to tour Down Under. They’re still going strong after three decades, as I discovered in my chat with David. He, along with Felipe (the American Indian) and Alex (the soldier), has been there right from the beginning!

Robin Leach: David, 30 years?

David Hodo: Yeah, 31 years, actually.

RL: It is pretty amazing.

DH: Yeah, I never thought or wanted to work this long!

Photo: Ron Warren

The Village People's David Hodo.

RL: Why do you think the longevity? In this genre, no one has lasted this long.

DH: We always say it is about the fun factor. We set out to create a show. We invented high energy. It is our responsibility when we go onstage to make sure that the audience is having a ball. I think the look itself has created curiosity. When we do shows now, there are children in the audience whose parents were children when we were popular. I think there is a curiosity factor about who is this strange-looking group. They grew up listening to the music and doing the “YMCA” dance. It is something that took on a life of its own.

RL: Do you still get a rush singing “Macho Man,” “In the Navy” and “YMCA” as you did in the beginning?

DH: Absolutely. People always ask if we get tired singing the same music over and over, and yes we do, but we enjoy entertaining people so much that each show is an experience, and the only time it becomes rote is when we are jet lagged and hurting, but usually it is as fresh as it ever was. We now have “Trash Disco,” a routine that incorporates 70 dance favorites into one special performance number.

RL: Even in its present incarnation, you have all been together for a while, and three of you have been there for 31 years?

DH: I left the group in 1982 for six years, then the group shut down for a bit. It pulled back, and nobody expected us to go on as long as we have. We were told by the music industry that we had a four-year lifespan being a novelty act.

RL: I guess even you didn’t believe you would last this long?

DH: Never. It was something about Jacques Morali’s music. He could write a million hooks, and Neil Bogart at Casablanca Records would always pick the right one.

Photo: Ron Warren

The Village People.

RL: Are The Village People as popular in America as they are around the other parts of the world, or are they a larger phenomenon across the seas?

DH: We are still working all over the country. We just got back from setting a world record of the largest “YMCA” dance in El Paso, Texas. We had 55,000! The official count isn’t out yet. The largest one we had was 75,000 in Belgium, but the Guinness people weren’t there, so it is not official. They did come, though, to Texas, where we had the 55,000 at the Sun Bowl, so that will be the new official world record!

RL: Is your audience today as young as it is old?

DH: You know, it is a range of all ages; you simply cannot classify them anymore. Years ago, it was the club people. Now it is grandparents with grandchildren. You see, disco never died -- knock on wood, thank God!

RL: What does disco have that has outlived every other genre of music?

DH: Again, I think it was about the fun. I think when disco happened, it was in the ’60s. It was after the war protest, and people were tired. They wanted to get dressed up and go dance. I have nothing against that music. I have walls and walls of that music. That is all I can say that people just wanted dance and have a good time.

It’s amazing! Here we are at the beginning of a new year, and we’ve already got a tour booked for Australia again in September. We already have at least 50 gigs penciled in for the year. It is phenomenal. We just got our star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We’re somewhere between Betty Grable and Liberace. We’ll still be going even after we’ve all died. I think of that as a unique miracle.

The Village People headline with Sister Sledge and Rose Royce tomorrow night at the Star of the Desert Arena at Buffalo Bill’s in Primm on the state line border -- just a disco hop south on I-15. Blast their hits for 20 minutes, and you won’t even notice the miles!

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