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The cops were outnumbered and hid inside the bar. People started shouting, “Gay power!” and then, “Gay is good!,” and when a butch lesbian resisting arrest was hit on the head by a cop with a billy club, the crowd went “berserk.” But whatever the immediate cause, on the night of June 28, 1969, many patrons refused to show police their IDs, and they didn’t leave after being released. No one knows for sure why the raid at the Stonewall Inn-a mafia-owned gay bar on Christopher Street with a racially mixed clientele-was different. They lost their jobs, were cut off from family and friends, and were often subjected to psychiatric cures for “disordered” behavior-a steep price for a drink and a dance. Like most stories of gay* life in New York between 19, the legend of the Village People has its origins in the Stonewall riots of 1969-“Our Bastille Day,” as the novelist and critic Edmund White (who was at the riots) described the feverish June nights when queer Villagers fought back against the New York cops who’d been raiding their bars for decades.ĭuring a typical raid in the Village, undercover police would enter a bar, gather evidence of “homosexual conduct”-same-sex dancing or touching, cross-dressing-and then turn up the lights and announce, “Police! We’re taking the place!” Through the 1960s, men and women arrested in gay bars for “indecency” would wake up the next day with their names and sometimes their addresses in the newspaper. “Hey you, Indian-you want to be in a group?” Belolo grabbed a napkin and jotted down: “Indian, Construction Worker, Leatherman, Cowboy, Cop, Sailor.” Morali walked over to the Indian (Rose was, in fact, Lakota) who’d enticed them into the bar. Looking around the room, the producers were thinking the same thing. It was as if every American male stereotype was there, welcoming them to the Village. My god, look at those characters, Belolo thought. Another patron could have just come from a construction site, if his jeans and boots hadn’t been so clean and tight. Next to the French producers sat a guy with a thick mustache, wearing a Stetson and boots. Every so often, Rose jumped onto the bar to dance. The DJ was playing a mix of what sounded like Native American tribal music and the disco Morali and Belolo revered. Inside the Anvil, they watched Felipe Rose, the skinny guy who’d lured them there, take his place behind the bar. “Oh god, he is good-looking-I’m thirsty!” Jacques said to Henri. He had a leather loincloth wrapped around his narrow hips, and bells tied to his ankles. They heard bells ringing as the man passed by, a Native American headdress flapping behind him. The producers spotted him on Christopher Street, of course. Joseph Masse’s photographs from the Village People photo shoot and subsequent cover of their first album. Spread from the November 1977 issue of Mandate (“Entertainment and Eros for Renaissance Men”), showing. Morali had always wanted to write songs for a gay audience, and though rock-and-roll record sales depended on radio play, Belolo knew that if a song made people at the discos rush onto the floor, it could break the bank.
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The Ritchie Family had been a hit, but now the producers were in search of a new act. It was a warm day in 1977, and they were on the make, having moved to New York from Paris after one of their groups, a Philadelphia trio called the Ritchie Family, made it to number five on the Billboard charts with a disco cover of a song from the 1930s. Though Henri, unlike his business partner, was straight, both men were infatuated with fashion, America, and, above all, disco. It reminded the two music producers of Paris, and besides, the gay clubs had the best DJs. Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo had been spending a lot of time in Greenwich Village that spring.