Page 500 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

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

airport, I ran down the stairs, missed several and ended up into
[sic] the next landing.
I spent the contest weekend and the past weeks recuperating
from a broken hip.... Now, months later, I’m still not completely
functional, but at least I’m mobile.
...The healing process takes a lot of energy, leaving little for the
creative process. [This was precisely my point when his 1978 cancer
made him AWOL from Drummer, leaving Al Shapiro and me space,
time, and energy to creatively grow Drummer from an LA magazine
to a San Francisco magazine.]
Now the holidays have come and gone, and it is time to get our
act together.....you should see the changes in size and content. We
have merged with Terrance Hawke to become Alternate Hawke
Publishing.... It’s a big step for someone still on a couch....Thanks
for your patience —John H. Embry

Flat on his back on his couch, Embry, at age 74, continuing to think
feuds and controversy incite publicity, decided he would print a general
press release from Jake Staley who was representing himself as the new edi-
tor of a new generation of Drummer Online under Mike Zuhl who soon
after founded his spin-off leather-contest organization, Drummer North
America, with its clever acronym, DNA.
Embry had not owned Drummer for fifteen years, but after he sold it
in 1986, he increasingly suffered the world’s worst case of seller’s remorse.
Characteristically, in his trashing of twenty-first century Drummer,
ventriloquist Embry tooled his words through his Super MR editor Robert
Davolt, who was also the terminal editor of San Francisco Drummer.
In the end, in this Super MR #7 (January 2001), Embry revealed his
heart. He bore a grudge against Drummer itself. With an introductory sen-
tence, Embry, in league with Robert Davolt, re-published Jake Staley’s press
release in “Letters to the Editor” (page 6-7):

DIFFERENT DRUMMER

This letter [written by the new editor of the new Drummer Online
who was accusing Embry of lying about Drummer] was forwarded
to us by one of our readers...[Embry’s italics]

Jake Staley: Drummer – Still Hot, and still America’s leading
Leather Magazine. We have been reading recently in the leather

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved—posted 03-14-2017
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