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, returning 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,” according to 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 too. Willis immediately replaced the tribe’s cowboy, native American chief, construction worker, soldier, and leather-clad biker. That left Simpson and his bandmates fighting for their livelihoods.
“We wanted to use ‘Formerly Village People,'” according to Simpson, who plans to challenge Willis’ and Belolo’s arrangement in court. His band — which includes two original Village People — played a show recently in Philadelphia under the name “The Kings of Disco.” That’s also how they’ll be billed when they perform Village People songs in Melbourne, Fla. next month. He said fans at that performance recognized the group right away, but claimed it’s hard to promote their shows under the new name.
The former and current incarnations of the group have been warring online for months with the deposed members warning fans that Willis’ current version of the band isn’t the Village People they’ve known over the past 38 years. Willis has taunted back, even issuing an “imposters alert,” reminding fans it’s his voice that recorded the band’s biggest hits.
Simpson’s wife, Leslie, who also attended the “Chicago” after-party, along with singer Freddie Jackson, points out that her husband was on duty when the disco hitmakers celebrated their 30th anniversary by getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2008. She says appearances on TV commercials as well as “Oprah,” “The Wendy Williams Show,” and “Family Feud,” as well as collaborations with Cher, Kool & the Gang and KC & the Sunshine band have earned Simpson’s band a fan base of its own.
Also attending Monday’s performance of “Chicago” was “The Cosby Show” star Phylicia Rashad, who was married to Willis from 1978 to 1982.
With Flo Anthony, Brian Niemietz
