After last week’s exclusive with Anthony Varrecchia, Anthony suggested we speak to his good friend the legend that is The Village People’s David Hodo who has played the Construction worker role for over thirty years! Words cannot express how excited we re to be able to bring you this interview. ‘YMCA’ was one of our favourite songs as a kid and we seem to have acquired three copies of their iconic film Don’t Stop The Music on DVD. We caught up with David to discuss his famous hard hat, neary being sued by The Young Man’s Christian Association and having Mrs Clair Huxtable aka Phylicia Rashad open for them on tour with her disco album – a tribute to Josephine Baker.

You started on Broadway. Which would are your dream roles?
Yes, I did start on Broadway. My dream roles would have been Pippin in the original, which I saw four times, and Bobby in A Chorus Line. I was eventually asked to understudy Bobby along with two other characters for the first national touring company, but knowing how difficult understudying three different characters, their lines, their songs, and where each character was in a dance number I turned it down, and Michael Bennett [The Theatre Director] was pissed, because nobody turned Michael Bennett down. Had I taken the job, I would never have been cast in Village People.

For The Village People, you answered an ad for ‘macho types’ in a newspaper. What did you have to do at your audition?
I only auditioned for The Village People because, what would have been my third Broadway show closed on the road and I needed one more week’s employment in order to file for an unemployment claim. The audition was unimpressive to me. It took place in what was possibly the shoddiest rehearsal studio in Manhattan. I was asked to sing and then to dance, but rather than have a choreographer, which I was used to at auditions, a tape deck was clicked on and I was just told to dance around. When I left the audition I hoped to never hear from it again, but got a call that night by Jacques Morali, and was told that I was to be the construction worker. I could barely understand him because his French accent was so thick. I had to keep asking him to repeat himself. When I hung the phone up I went into the living room where my roommates were and told them, ‘You know that awful audition I had today, well I think I got it.’

I understand you were wary or unconvinced by a lot of The Village People’s projects when first presented with them. What made you take part in them?
The first song that we, as a group, recorded was ‘Macho Man’, which didn’t impress me at all, in fact I thought it was about the stupidest song I’d ever heard. Next came the movie, Can’t Stop The Music. Many people love the it, but the critics did not. When I first got the script, after reading only a few pages I hurled it across the room and called our producers and told them that it was a trite piece of crap, but we had no choice but to participate in it. Then came the Renaissance album, with the ‘New Wave’ look. Again I argued with our producers, telling them that we needed to get out of the satin pants and bugle beaded shirts and go back to our old torn jeans and flannel shirts, needless to say my argument went unheeded, and the next thing we knew we were wearing lipstick and eyebrow pencil. When that failed we went back to our torn jeans, flannel shirts, leather and feathers.

Did you ever get told to tone down your act on TV? Did you ever think you were pushing things too far?
On occasion we were given the old Elvis Presley line that if we didn’t stop moving the way we were moving, they would only film us from the waist up. Our reply was, ‘Do what you need to do.’ We deliberately pushed things too far, and weren’t about to change anything. Our fans had come to expect a certain kind of performance from us and we weren’t about to disappoint them. It’s funny how what was once considered salacious is now basically ho-hum.

Were you thankful you pretty much had a uniform to wear every night or would you have liked space to play with that?
As far as my costume went, at first I was really disappointed that I didn’t get any of the resplendent costumes that the cowboy, Indian, and leather man got. I was given $5.00 and told to go buy a hardhat. As it turned out, I was the lucky one because my costumes simply went into the washer and dryer, whereas the others had to have uniforms taken to the cleaners, beads restrung and new headdresses replaced and the leather outfit practically had to be groomed because the sweat would ruin it. The reflector shades were my idea. I felt that as long as the audience couldn’t see in my eyes, they wouldn’t know how ridiculous I felt singing ‘Macho Man’ and I could sell the hell out of it. They really served as a kind of mask for me.

I love Phylicia Rashad’s Josephine Superstar. She was married to The Village People’s Victor Willis who worked on it with her. Do you have any insight or stories about that album?
As for Phylicia Rashad, I fell madly in love with her. She was classy and could light a room up like a hundred watt bulb. For a short while she was our opening act, performing from the Josephine Superstar album. The audiences loved her, especially the gay audiences. Every night I would quickly put my costume on so I could watch her from the wings. She was an electrifying performer and had the audience in the palm of her hand. I was thrilled for her when she became Mrs. Clair Huxtable. Then she became the first black actress to win a Tony Award for a dramatic role.

Did you get a lot of groupies wanting to hook up after a show? Being the construction worked in the The Village People must have been a great calling card.
Yes, we had a lot of groupies waiting to hook up after the show, but the kind of people that managed to work their way backstage, for the most part, weren’t the kind that I wanted anything to do with. They were usually pushy and garrulous, but on occasion ….

Which song are you proudest of from The Village People’s repertoire?
The first time I heard ‘YMCA’ I knew it was a hit. We were considered commercial pop and we were actually selling a commercial. When we first performed it on a short lived Dick Clark production called Wednesday Night Live, word got backstage to us that the YMCA was going to sue us, but the fact is, they didn’t have a patent on the letters YMCA, what they owned the rights to was The Young Man’s Christian Association, so the show went on as planned and the rest is history. With the advent of the arm movements, that were created by the kids on American Bandstand, the song took on a life of it’s own, and I can honestly say that there are few places on this grand planet that don’t know the ‘YMCA Dance.’ I am proud of the fact that we turned YMCA into possibly the only international anthem.

Did The Village People ever use their platform to highlight the AIDS crisis?
We never used our show as a platform for the AIDS crises. It was such a terrible time that we just wanted to allow people to forget, if only for an hour, what the hell that was going on, and just let them sing and dance and enjoy themselves; however we never missed an opportunity to perform for the myriad AIDS Dance-a-thons that were going on during the 90s, and as a result were able to help raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the cause.

I know Ella Fitzgerald was a fan. Where you surprised? Which other celebrity fans did you have?
I grew up listening to Ella Fitzgerald through my mom, I was very young, but knew her voice in a heartbeat. I think I now own just about everything she recorded. She and Billy Holiday are my comfort music, so when Ella came onstage to announce the winners of the American Music Award for best singing group, and pried open the envelope and announced, ‘Oh, it’s my boys, The Village People,’ I could barely believe my ears, she actually knew who we were. The rest was like a dream. When we ran up on stage, she put her arms out and gave me a great big hug, I could have died right there and been perfectly happy.
Merv Griffin was a great fan of ours and we performed many times on his show. One of our most surprising fans was the one and only Beverly Sills. She was on a quiz show and the question was – to paraphrase – ‘Who are Randy Jones, David Hodo, Felipe Rose, Glenn Hughes, Alex Briley, and Victor Willis?’ Beverly took no time in saying, ‘That’s my boys, The Village People.’ We were but a Disco group and one of our greatest opera stars knew who we were.

The Village People were meant to be a novelty act. Do you think they transcended that?
In the beginning, we were told, point blank, that because we were a ‘novelty’ group,  we had a shelf life of four years … tops. In 2017 the group will have been in existence for forty years, and still going strong. Single handedly, through hard work, we turned a ‘novelty’ act into an entertainment juggernaut known the world over. When we performed for the last game at the old Yankee’s stadium, I think every camera in that packed stadium was just waiting for the first letter of the YMCA to formed before a million flash-bulbs went off. It was almost scary, it looked like lightening had just hit the stadium. The Yankee’s grounds keepers have made the YMCA part of their routine when they come out at half time and the entire audience always does the arm movements along with them. In 2008, we were presented with our own star in the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. So that kind of blows a hole through the ‘novelty’ thing.

When you mention disco to the passer by on the street (in the UK at least). Odds are they will think of Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor and The Village People. How does that make you feel?
To be mentioned along with Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor on the streets of the UK, as you say is a great honor. We’ve performed at the Hippodrome at least twice as well as every nook and cranny in the UK that could book us. I don’t know if the Mean Fiddler is still in existence, but we performed there twice. The Mean Fiddler was basically a punk venue, if I’m correct, and after our first performance there we were told that we were the first group that they never had to lower the protection curtain down for. I guess it was common place to hurl ashtrays and beer bottles at whoever was performing there. The only thing that was tossed our way was a baby doll that we kept in our equipment luggage for years.
And though he has fallen out of favor, we also toured with Gary Glitter, who called us into his dressing room and told us that we were the first group that his audience didn’t boo off the stage.

Lastly we ask everyone this, but we are named after the iconic Mariah Carey song, ‘Loverboy’. What is your favourite Mariah Carey song and why?
As for a favorite Mariah Carey song, I can honestly say, that until you told me that your magazine is named after a song of hers – Loverboy – I couldn’t have named one of her songs with a gun pointed at my head. I lean more towards Dusty Springfield, who I fell in love with when I was about seventeen years old and first saw her on a U.S. pop show called Shindig. She seemed to float on stage and proceeded to wail out ‘Stay Awhile.’ She was an instant sensation and was what came to be know in the states as ‘Blue-eyed Soul’. An English girl who sounded like an American soul singer. What wasn’t to love? I’m also more into Linda Ronstadt, Roseanne Cash, and one of my other great loves … Tina Turner.