Former Village People Member: 'Y.M.C.A.' Is Not A Gay Anthem [UPDATED]
Contents:
- THE GAY ECSTASY OF THE VILLAGE PEOPLE
- A GAY IN REMEMBERS LIFE THE VILLAGE, AND THE VILLAGE PEOPLE
- HAPPY PRIDE! HOW “Y.M.C.A.” BEME A GAY ANTHEM!
- THE VILLAGE PEOPLE’S RANDY JON SPEAKS ON GAY MARRIAGE
THE GAY ECSTASY OF THE VILLAGE PEOPLE
Fifty years after Stonewall, Felipe Rose—“The Indian” om the Village People—remembers New York Cy’s Greenwich Village as the gay rights movement took hold. * village people members gay *
However, be this memory real or simulacm, strik me as hilar given what the Village People are universally known for: tongue--cheek gay nuendo, sparsely vered by a flimsy veneer of hyper-macho drag.
But they’re not ‘jt’ gay. They’re almost overtly (homo)sexual. However the service’s tomatic n-on feature clearly disagreed and cid that, when Cowley’s sensual, gay bathhoe-ready rhythms end, ‘Macho Man’ would be a great follow-up.
A GAY IN REMEMBERS LIFE THE VILLAGE, AND THE VILLAGE PEOPLE
And I was fascated by the empowerment I felt om Village People, the tle track on their eponymo but album, and an unambiguo ll for gay liberatn that sounds more ak to a prott chant than a chart topper. Said first three albums (and pecially the first two) rry a surprisgly polil energy; the more popular tracks, such as the eponymo Macho Man, might be vacuo but others – take I Am What I Am, a fiant chant that suggts exactly what you’d expect to suggt – envisn a world which male bodi uld be ee to e together whout Francis was one of the gay mecs the Village People celebrated on their visnary but album (Cred: Alamy)As far as evokg same-sex love go, there was a precent – om dis’s genis, queered sexual posivy was the life blood of the genre, as Peter Shapiro intifi Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Dis.
HAPPY PRIDE! HOW “Y.M.C.A.” BEME A GAY ANTHEM!
“As the cultural adjunct of the gay pri movement, dis was the embodiment of the pleasure-is-polics ethos of a new generatn of gay culture, a generatn fed up wh police raids, dranian laws and the darkns of the closet, ” he wr. That said, the genre’s lyrics tend to chew more overt polil statements – and the few that did rry an unambiguo msage of gay liberatn didn’t chart well.
THE VILLAGE PEOPLE’S RANDY JON SPEAKS ON GAY MARRIAGE
I thk to myself that gay people have no group, nobody to personalise the gay people, you know? – Jacqu MoraliIn her dis chronicle Hot Stuff: Dis and the Remakg of Amerin Culture, Alice Echols rells a 1978 Rollg Stone article which Jacqu Morali – the French producer who, alongsi Henri Bolelo and eventual group lear Victor Willis, created the Village People – put forward a manifto of gay visibily: “Morali outed himself, and emphasised that as a homosexual he was mted to endg the cultural visibily of gay men.
‘I thk to myself that gay people have no group, ’ he said, ‘nobody to personalise the gay people, you know?
The album is prised of paeans to the Uned Stat’ gay unrbelly, focg on four plac: San Francis, Hollywood, Fire Island and Greenwich Village.