Drummer
Magazine
Drummer Magazine was launched by publisher and editor John Embry several times in several places: Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco. It evolved from a bar ad broadsheet in LA and relaunched as a leather “fraternity” magazine around 1975, with support from an additional founder Jeanne Barney. This was a complicated time for gay businesses, with intense, frequent raids of gay bars, and focused entrapment of gay men soliciting sex. Embry created “H.E.L.P.” to raise funding for legal aid to gay men, putting him at odds with the police commissioner of the city.
John Embry was arrested at a Slave Auction in 1975, raising money to defend against police entrapment. That was enough harassment for him, and he picked up and moved Drummer to San Francisco. Without the problems of Los Angeles, Drummer exploded in content, distribution, and impact on the gay community with its fraternal friendship message, and alignment of gay male with extreme masculinity. Drummer became the definition, and vanguard of “alternative” at the time. They adopted lines from Thoreau as their guiding vision.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Not exactly a skin magazine as we think of them today, Embry’s Drummer was the equivalent of an “Esquire” for blue-collar gay men. Issues featured a mix of fiction, artwork, photo-story layouts, personal ads, and advertisements for gay businesses. As simple as this sounds, nothing quite like it existed before – even publishing gay business information was new and shocking. With a “Leather Lifestyle” focus, Drummer also put forward a radical rework of the image of gay men and masculinity. Gay men (echoing Walt Whitman perhaps) were now truckers and farmers, firemen and police, cigar-smoking, sweaty, hairy, and ready for sex. Drummer was instrumental in crafting and promoting the image of a hyper-masculine gay man ready for sex at all hours with all men. In contrast with other gay skin magazines, Drummer also had many “regular guy” models, balding, bearded, all races and sizes. Nobody reading drummer regularly would feel intimidated the men they saw.
The “Drum” character was the mascot of Drummer magazine in the strips by Bill Ward. Like clockwork, his three-panel strips appeared in every issue month after month, year after year, for decades, creating a mirror to changes in gay culture. From lone biker evolving into bar friendships, and on to “settled down at home” imagery, “Drum” was both the source of sexual inspiration, as well as a chronicler of trends – leather, daddy, bear, biker.
At the same time, a surprising range of other artists were featured as mostly single-panel images throughout the magazine. Many were semi-anonymous, including Blade, The Hun, Adam, Domino, Olaf, A. Jay, Teddy of Paris. Several, like REX, Etienne, Stephen, Steve Kuchar, and of course Tom of Finland, went on to become very well known, working in gay erotic or frankly sexual art careers for decades.
Along with artwork on paper, Drummer featured the major gay and sexually focused photographers of the day: A cover by Robert Mapplethorpe, what normally would be called editorials by Erwin Olaf, Christopher Makos, Rick Castro, Jim Wigler, Bob Mizer, David Hurles, Peter Berlin, Bruce of Los Angeles, Arthur Tress to just sample a few names.
The juggernaut studio “Colt” along with photography by Jim French were featured, along with photography by his early partner Lout Thomas of short-lived “Target Studios”.
Likewise, writing in Drummer came from a variety of cutting-edge “transgressive” authors including Larry Townsend, Phil Andros, Tim Barrus, Jack Fritscher and others.
Drummer went on to become many firsts – first national gay sex magazine, first North American gay sex magazine, first international gay sex magazine. In the internet world of dating apps and “recon”, hardcore “pornhub” and For Fans Only, Drummer seems quaint. But John Embry’s Drummer was an amazing event in the chronicle of gay liberation. As we bring “drum” forward to people who have never heard of drummer, or seen Bill Ward’s drawings, it is far from nostalgic, and still has the power to excite and shape gay views of men again, “non-toxic” masculinity celebrating pleasure.
