VILLAGE PEOPLE BATTLE
TALK ABOUT a cop out. Village People “police officer” Ray Simpson put aside his blues to watch his sister Valerie make her Broadway debut as Mama Morton in “Chicago” on Monday. But the buzz at the play’s after-party at Harlem’s Sugar Bar was about the band’s original cop character, Victor Willis (inset), who returned from obscurity last fall to take back the role he walked away from nearly 40 years ago. Simpson replaced him in 1979. “He’s beside himself,” said one partygoer who knows Simpson. Willis won a lawsuit in 2012 allowing him to reclaim publishing rights on many of the band’s hits including “YMCA,” “Macho Man” and “In the Navy.” Last year, Willis reached an agreement with French producer Henri Belolo, who created the Village People, giving him rights to the band’s name and image. Willis immediately replaced the tribe’s cowboy, native American chief, construction worker, soldier and leatherclad biker. That left Simpson and his bandmates fighting for their livelihoods. “We wanted to use ‘Formerly Village People,’ ” said Simpson, who plans to challenge Willis’ and Belolo’s arrangement in court. His band — which includes two original members of the Village People — played a show two weeks ago in Philadelphia under the name the Kings of Disco. That’s also how they’ll be billed when they perform in Melbourne, Fla., next month. He said fans at the past performance recognized the group.
The former and current incarnations of the group have been warring online for months, with the deposed members warning fans that Willis’ current iteration of the band isn’t the Village People they’ve known over the past 38 years. Willis has returned the favor, even issuing an “impostors alert” and telling fans it’s his voice on the band’s biggest hits.
Simpson’s wife, Leslie, points out that her husband was on duty in 2008, when the disco hitmakers celebrated their 30th anniversary by getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
She says appearances on TV commercials, as well as “Oprah” and “Family Feud,” have earned Simpson’s band a fan base of its own.
Also in attendance at Monday’s performance of “Chicago” was “The Cosby Show” star Phylicia
Rashad, who was married to Willis from 1978 to 1982.