Page 45 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

Jack Fritscher Chapter 1 27

to catch, at worst, a temporary disease and, at best, the grass-roots temper of
gay male psychology as grist for magazine articles, fiction, and photographs.
As a professionally educated journalist erotically identified with leather,
patrolling the bars and baths and bistros of San Francisco and sexing my
way into fuck-and-talk contact, I worked to employ my 1950s and 1960s
magazine skills, ripening my reporter’s factual insight and my documentar-
ian’s intuitive discernment into what gay men liked and what they wanted
in the 1970s. Perhaps, my version of Drummer worked because it helped
define the pop-culture of leathermen inventing a new lifestyle. As published
inside Drummer, readers responded that my editing and writing reflected
their grass-roots leather culture as it blossomed, making 1970s Drummer,
the peoples’ Drummer. The beauty of Drummer was that Drummer helped
create the very leather culture it reported on, thus spreading leather identity
farther. What Drummer started locally spread internationally.

Editor’s Note

1971-1977: A DRUMMER TIMELINE

How Drummer was invented in Los Angeles and San Francisco and
found its slowly emerging international character during the tumultu-
ous first decade after Stonewall, helping create the very leather culture it
reported on during the 1970s Golden Age of Leather.

I
Gestation and Birth

I. 1. 1971: In December, Drummer appears as a small “zine” on yel-
low newsprint reporting on bars, restaurants, and hairpieces in West
Hollywood.

I. 2. 1973: Drummer appears as the samizdat political H.E.L.P./Drummer
Newsletter slamming the LAPD for harassment, bar raids, and arrests.

I. 3. June 20, 1975: Drummer official first issue of 214 issues in large
format with slick cover.

1.4. 1977: “The Year Drummer Nearly Died,” fighting for survival, and
virtually out of business while being retooled during two stoppages of four
months (February-May) and five months (August-December).

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved—posted 03-16-2017
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