Page 73 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

Jack Fritscher Chapter 2 55

CHAPTER 2

DIRTY ISSUES:
Some Drummer Covers Selected
by Artist, Photographer, and Model

• The Drummer Salon in the Titanic 1970s: The Power of
the Drummer Editorial Desk, Sam Steward, Jim Kane,
Robert Opel, Al Shapiro, and an Iconic Dinner Party
Hosting Tom of Finland
• Shooting Drummer Covers: Robert Mapplethorpe, Lou
Thomas, Robert Opel, David Sparrow, and Jack Fritscher
• Why Tom of Finland Never Appeared on the Cover of
Drummer While Embry Owned It
• Gay Marriage, Leather-Style: 1976
• Gay Face Uncloseted: “Tough Customers” and “Tough
Shit”

“The past is never where you think you left it.”
—Original Cockette Rumi Missabu (James Bartlett), 2014

Editor’s Note:
Jack Fritscher was the only Drummer editor to shoot Drummer cov-
ers: eight in total. As a photographer, he was also the only Drummer edi-
tor to shoot photographs for the interior and centerfold of the magazine,
beginning with Drummer 21 (March 1978) through Drummer 204 (June
1997).

Drummer covers, at least some of them, provide handy hooks in the time-
lining of Drummer history. Drawings graced the covers of many of the first
issues because well into the Titanic 1970s gays remained as afraid of cameras
as they had been before gay liberation when cops used cameras as power-
tools to gather facial recognition for legal prosecution. As a result, there are
not many early cover photos displaying the faces of the first-class party-
people who innocently cruised on at full speed not knowing that ahead lay

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