Victor Willis, who fronted the Village People and co-wrote ‘Y.M.C.A.,’ dies at 74

Victor Willis, who helped make the Village People one of the most enduring groups of the disco era, singing lead and co-writing hits including “Y.M.C.A.” and “Macho Man,” died June 30. He was 74.

His wife, Karen Huff-Willis, announced the death in a statement on social media, saying that Mr. Willis suffered from a “short, but aggressive illness.” Additional details were not immediately available.

Mr. Willis rose to fame in the late 1970s as the front man of the Village People, donning flamboyant costumes while becoming a camp favorite of nightclubs and dance halls. Dressing as a policeman or naval officer, he shared the stage with a parade of macho male archetypes - bandmates who dressed as a cowboy, a biker or a Native American in a headdress - while performing upbeat hits including “Macho Man,” the group’s first Top 25 single, and “In the Navy,” a military spoof.

The Village People’s biggest hit, 1978’s “Y.M.C.A.,” remains a mainstay of weddings, sporting events and party playlists, bringing listeners to their feet with its joyous horn blasts, four-on-the-floor drum groove and sing-along chorus. The song was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2020.

“Everybody knows ‘Y.M.C.A.’,” said Mr. Willis, who drew inspiration for the song from his trips to New York’s 63rd Street Y as a newcomer to the city. “Everywhere I go, people tell me their little children know ‘Y.M.C.A.’ They don’t know Village People, but they know ‘Y.M.C.A.’”

President Donald Trump has regularly played “Y.M.C.A.” at his rallies, and Mr. Willis and the Village People performed the song last year at an event that was part of Trump’s second inauguration.

“He was a great and happy guy,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post Wednesday, adding that “we will think of Victor every time YMCA is played, like today, and all throughout this July Fourth Birthday week.”

Ahead of the inauguration, Mr. Willis and the group took to social media to say that their performance was not intended as an endorsement of Trump. Their “preferred candidate” had been Kamala Harris, the group wrote in a lengthy Facebook post, adding that they believed that “Y.M.C.A.” had the power to bridge partisan divides.

“We’re trying to make people come together and unite the country,” Mr. Willis told NPR. “And regardless if you didn’t vote for him - basically, I’m a Democrat. We lost, so we have to put that aside, and it was time for everybody to get behind the president-elect.”

Mr. Willis’s decision to participate in inauguration ceremonies polarized the group’s fans, including gay listeners who had embraced the Village People’s macho image and subtly suggestive lyrics for decades. The group’s shifting lineup included gay and straight musicians, although Mr. Willis dismissed labels about the band and its music, going so far as to threaten to sue news organizations that described “Y.M.C.A.” - with its lyrics about hanging out “with all the boys” and doing “whatever you feel” - as a gay anthem.

“The group performs a masculine show. Gay people like us, straight people like us,” he told Rolling Stone in 1979. “But we’re not a gay group.”

Mr. Willis was born in Texas on July 1, 1951, and grew up in San Francisco, singing at a Baptist church where his father served as minister. By age 15, he was singing in a local group, the Ballads, that opened for the Temptations.

After moving to New York, he performed in Broadway productions of “Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “The Wiz,” including while serving as an understudy for some of “The Wizard of Oz” adaptation’s lead characters. Amid the disco craze of “Saturday Night Fever” and Studio 54, he was asked in 1977 to front a group being developed by Henri Belolo, a music executive, and Jacques Morali, a songwriter.

“I had a dream that you sang lead vocals on an album I produced, and it went very, very big,” Morali told him, according to an online history of the Village People. “I have four tracks. I can’t pay you much right now, but if you agree, I’ll make you a star.”

Mr. Willis agreed, leading to the release of the Village People’s self-titled debut later that year. He continued to record and perform with the group until 1979, when he left as Belolo and Morali prepared to release a film about the group, the critically reviled “Can’t Stop the Music.”

“I just felt the ship sinking, and I didn’t want to be on it when it went down,” Mr. Willis told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2015, “because I felt I had a little more life in me.”

Mr. Willis recorded an album, “Solo Man,” that went unreleased until 2015. (He said it had been blocked by Belolo and Morali, who were angry by his decision to leave the group.) He also “got kind of drugged out,” in his telling, and struggled with addiction before entering rehab in 2006 at the Betty Ford Center in California. He said his recovery was aided by Huff-Willis, a lawyer, whom he married in 2007.

An earlier marriage to actress Phylicia Rashad, who appeared with him in “The Wiz” and later starred as Clair Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” ended in divorce. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.

With Huff-Willis’s encouragement, Mr. Willis won a 2012 copyright case to regain control over the Village People’s biggest hits. He rejoined the group after reaching a settlement in 2017 with Belolo’s production company.

“The Bee Gees’ ‘Stayin’ Alive’ is one of my favorite songs; as long as you stay alive, anything’s possible,” he said in the Union-Tribune interview. “Then, you have the chance of working again.”