Page 460 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

P. 460

442 Gay Pioneers: How Drummer Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

If taking on Goodstein in LA was a gay cat fight, messing with straight
Italian guys in Jersey might have meant a horse head in the bed.
His foolishness aside, I told him, bold-faced told him, that he could not
dub his mag, Macho, because there was already a straight magazine named
Macho located in South San Francisco. I had worked with Macho before
Embry fled LA. I knew the “straight macho” Macho publisher would sue to
protect his intellectual property.
This, history might note, is how Embry and I settled on the shortened
title, Mach.
I also warned him that grinding out the third-banana, Mach, would
mystify and confuse the Drummer faithful who were upset enough to write
hundreds of letters that Drummer was always late.
Mach was Embry’s own “Virtual Drummer” the way Man2Man was
mine.
Mach Quarterly appeared in January 1980. Man2Man Quarterly arrived
in October 1980. The internal evidence of Embry’s editorial incest is within
the first issue of Mach. Embry “revisited” (his word) the photos from Born
to Raise Hell that he had published five years before in Drummer 3. Mach
contributors and design layout were interchangeable with Drummer.
In a shell game to distance the two San Francisco magazines, he listed
a single blind address for Mach that made it seem produced in LA: Mach,
7985 Santa Monica Blvd, Box 219, West Hollywood CA 90046 (page 62).
In Drummer 85, Embry proved the point when he confessed on page
4 of the Drummer Tenth Anniversary Issue that “we are even considering
including the contents of Mach within the pages of Drummer.”
After Embry sold Mach to DeBlase, I photographed two covers: Mach
20 (April 1990) and Mach 29 (July 1993).

3. AGAINST HIS FOUNDING PEERS AT
DATELINE NEWS MAGAZINE

In LA in November 1976, Dateline News Magazine, published by Dennis
Lind, edited by Drummer editor Jeanne Barney, and backed by Embry,
folded after one issue. Was it money? Was it politics? Was it Embry’s sabo-
tage of the partnership of several personalities, such as his frenemy Barney,
trying to establish their own ideas of gay publishing in LA? Was it a mirror
of Embry’s feud with Goodstein? The minute after Dateline tanked, Embry
danced on its grave. He revealed what had always been his secret plan: to
kill any and all Drummer competition. Were his erstwhile business part-
ners at Dateline surprised when he announced that, in less than sixty days,

455 456 457 458 459 460 461 462 463 464 465