How Village People’s Victor Willis went from Broadway to biggest disco hit ever before court victory that changed music
TO the untrained eye, he was just a bloke in a shiny police helmet singing about staying at the YMCA.
But behind the tight trousers and macho character in disco group Village People, Victor Willis was a musical hitmaker who co-wrote songs that will provide the soundtrack to every wedding, birthday and office party for years to come.
Yesterday, in a Facebook post, his wife Karen Huff-Willis announced Victor’s death, aged 74.
“It is with profound sadness that I must announce the death of my husband,” she said.
“Victor passed away on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, as a result of a short but aggressive illness.”
Long before he was commanding crowds to put their hands in the air to anthems that defined an era, including YMCA, Go West and In The Navy, Victor was singing gospel music in his Baptist minister father’s church.
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He grew up in San Francisco and his high school band, The Ballads, supported The Temptations.
He sat in on sessions with American jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, before becoming an actor and singer.
A role in the Las Vegas production of musical Hair earned him a place in Broadway productions of Two Gentlemen Of Verona and The Wiz.
In the late Seventies, he caught the attention of flamboyant French producer Jacques Morali, who was creating a musical group based on the macho stereotypes and gay pin-ups of New York’s Greenwich Village.
Their four-track demo, called The Village People, earned the group a record deal, and Jacques asked Victor to become the frontman.
While the rest of the line-up were recruited from dance studios and clubs for the roles of the cowboy, the Native American, the biker, the construction worker and the soldier, Victor was thought to be the only straight member.
After albums Macho Man in 1978, and Cruisin’ in ’79 which gave us YMCA, they put out Go West and its title track became a gay anthem, later covered by The Pet Shop Boys.
It also featured In The Navy, which the US Navy co-opted for a recruitment campaign, before realising they were using the ultimate camp parody.
It was around then that Victor met and married his first wife, future Cosby Show star Phylicia Rashad.
They split in 1982.
After battling growing frustrations within the group, Victor walked out in 1979.
But his departure triggered a downward spiral.
He struggled to escape the group’s flamboyant reputation and establish credibility on his own.
His 1979 solo project, Solo Man, remained unreleased for more than 30 years until 2015.
The Eighties and Nineties became a blur of substance abuse, addiction, and brushes with the law.
In 2015, he said: “I got very depressed over the years.
“I got kind of drugged out, because I was disappointed with the way things were and got frustrated, and gave up for a bit.”
He began to turn things around in 2006 after he received court-ordered substance abuse treatment and completed three years of probation.
After getting clean, he turned his energy towards a battleground between him and ruthless record executives who had pocketed the lion’s share of the royalties from the Village People’s catalogue.
This led Victor to meet his second wife Karen, an attorney who helped him fight his copyright case against the companies who controlled Village People’s hits.
They married in 2007.
Victor, armed with a gritty determination, launched a historic, multi-year lawsuit under a loophole in the 1976 US Copyright Act, which allows artists to reclaim their work after 35 years.
In a legal victory that sent shockwaves through the music industry, the US courts ruled in his favour in 2013.
Victor clawed back up to 50 per cent of the lucrative copyright percentages for YMCA and his other hits, becoming a hero to older musicians everywhere.
The resolution paved the way for his return to the group in 2017.
Older, wiser, but with that same thunderous voice, he toured the world to packed arenas, watching three generations of families throw their arms in the air to spell out those four famous letters.
By then, YMCA was being regularly played at Donald Trump’s political rallies, a use Victor was unhappy with.
“I don’t endorse Trump, I’ve never endorsed Trump, nor have the Village People,” he told the BBC in 2020.
However, he surprised fans last year by agreeing to take part in the politician’s second inauguration saying: “Our song YMCA is a global anthem that hopefully helps bring the country together after a tumultuous and divided campaign where our preferred candidate lost.”
In his tribute yesterday, Trump claimed: “He was a great and happy guy who loved that I used YMCA at my rallies.”
Regardless, YMCA remains Victors’ biggest hit, reaching No1 in 17 countries.
The star may have hung up his police helmet for the final time, but his legacy is firmly etched into global nightlife.
As long as there is a wedding with a dancefloor, people will be ready to fling their arms up in the air in the shape of a “Y”.
