Last year the Village People’s lead singer Victor Willis spoke about how he would take legal action against anyone suggesting that his band’s hit song YMCA has any gay subtext. Now it seems comedian Jim Jeffries might be the first lawsuit in his sights.
According to website TMZ, Jeffries has been sent a ‘cease and desist’ letter from the group after he cracked jokes about the song on his podcast.
Jeffries made fun of Willis and his proclamation that YMCA has no subtle messages about the LGBTIQA+ community on his At This Moment podcast.
The letter allegedly came from Karen Willis, wife of the lead singer who manages the band and demanded the Jeffries, and his cohosts, stop using what they referred to as an “obscene, derogatory and false description” of the song.
“Let’s be honest, what is the Y.M.C.A. song about?” Jefferies said on his podcast, before co-host Amos Gill replied, “Dude’s getting fucked in a hostel?”
“It’s about fucking in showers in a hostel, right?” Jefferies replied. “When you’re a young man who’s been kicked out of your home, ‘there’s a place you can go, I said. Young man’, when you’re short on your dough’,” he continued, paraphrasing the song’s lyrics.
“That is not the actual meaning of his lyrics, nor is there anywhere in the lyrics that would even remotely suggest such.” Karen Willis reportedly wrote in the letter. The comedians have been given a deadline of 17th march to publicly retract their statements or face the threat of a lawsuit from the band.
Willis co-wrote many of the band’s big hits, but he quit the band in the late 1970s just before they made the film Can’t Stop the Music. He returned to the band a few times over the years to record the occasional song.
Willis was out of the band for several decades, but a few years ago he won a legal battle that gave him control of the rights to the band’s name and songs.
The members of the band who had toured the world for many decades had to start performing under a different name while Willis put back on his policeman outfit and brought in new performers to be the Native American, Biker, Army Guy, Workman and Cowboy.
After Willis launched his revamped version of the band, one of their first live shows was here in Perth, and it got dismal reviews.
In recent years the band’s signature tune has become a theme song from US President Donald Trump who regularly dances along to it at his campaign rallies.
Last month the band performed at President Trump’s inauguration celebrations. Previously in an interview President Trump referred to the song as a “gay national anthem” for Americans.
