Legacy

The Future is the Past and the Past is Forever. Remembering the Dawn of Drummer June 20, 1975, may this 1970s editor-in-chief at 86, the last survivor of our mid-century startup, share an eyewitness memoir about the birth of a juggernaut so epic its impact was bigger...

I had just moved to California for work but had been married, so I decided it was finally time for me to follow what I had known for many years – that I was gay and preferred really masculine men. I ended up at Floyd’s (a Country and Western Bar) in Long Beach because...

In the mid-1970s, I was living in Chicago. At 21 years of age I had already been out for a few years, frequenting gay leather bars as my most regular nightlife haunts, and was deep within what we then and now call leather culture –– which today might also be called...

Ropework: Bernd Friedrich Models: Ian Gurnhill, Frank & Jacques, Pin & Friends Beelitz-Heilstätten –– 12,500 patients treated at this secret military hospital complex in the woods around Berlin. But the real exciting stuff started happening once they had all gone. We...

There's Always A First Time  - Tim Brough Drummer Magazine undoubtedly brought thousands of gay Leathermen into their authentic selves. But there had to be that gateway moment for us. The moment when you found that first magazine –– when you had your mind blown and...

It was completely out of the blue. “I was at a beer bust at the Eagle sitting up on the wall with a friend of mine. A photographer came up to me –asked me if I was interested in doing some photos…but he didn’t tell me what for. That was the same time when I did...

I had gone to the Castro for Saturday brunch. It was long before the first wave of AIDS, in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The weather was cool but sunny. I was in my late 20s, my head was shaved, and I was dressed in my radical pervert uniform: a black leather...

Model: @pupbudayy/pupbuday on Twitter. Berlin’s underbelly never sleeps. Caked in dust and sweat, these musclebound mutts clock in for a shift of pure filth. No safeword, just steel, workwear, and raw obedience echoing off concrete walls. When the light cuts through...

Magazines have always played a big part in my sexual development. Back in 1964 I was on a flight to Europe with my parents. The flight attendant passed out magazines and I took a Life. Inside, I found a full-page spread on “Homosexuality in America.” It featured a big...

Illustrated By– Issue #1 - Mosirisart Issue #24 - Logan Kowalsky Issue #36 - Logan (Fetish Artist) Issue #59 - Christopher Labine Jr. Issue #72 - Pig of Arabia Issue #75 - DonChooiDoodles Issue #79 - Lancelot Runge Issue #101 - SETH Issue #108 - BlkTigerArt Issue #118...

My life exploded at five years old when I first found my dad’s Physique Pictorial magazines in his underwear drawer. I was a curious child with sketchy boundaries. What I found in those B&W digest-sized pages sent me on a journey that is still in progress. Bob...

_____ When You First Heard. “Just looking at my background and growing up in the Bay Area here, I've said many times, I was an extremely sexual young man. I went looking for things to read because I intellectualized sex. I wasn't ‘not’ out. I conceptualized sex to the...

The year was 1982. I’d graduated from high school in June and was preparing to head off to my freshman year of college in September. I spent a lot of time that summer with my sister – she was thirteen years older than I was. We worked in the kitchen of the same...

Models: @fullcowmtl, @furryfella, @happy_pyxel, @antoinelthmtl.bsky.social At the glowing red urinals of Bar le Stud, Sir Max found himself two lucky pups to play with. Manhandling the eager sub chained to the urinals is just the start of a good time. Claiming another...

You have to remember– this was fifty years ago, when magazines meant paper, paper meant print, print meant fiction, fiction meant porn, and porn meant stories that would give the reader a hard-on and lead to a happy ending. My mission at Drummer was to find, edit, and...

My earliest experiences with Drummer began after I moved to New York in 1987. Unlike in my hometown of Philadelphia, where I carried the weight of shame, in New York, I could buy Drummer at the newsstand without a second thought. I could finally be who I wanted to be....

I was originally going to title this piece "Drummer Magazine Saved My Life," but worried that that might overstate the case, I changed it to what you see above. But really, it's almost the same. I discovered my first issue of Drummer when I needed it most, when I was...

Models: @deepandrough.bsky.social, @bahurff.bsky.social, Anonymous ACHTUNG. There’s always trouble on German motorways. Especially in the service station toilets. You never know when some construction workers might decide to finish their business on you or in you. You...

This year, as the magazine celebrates its milestone 50th anniversary it isn’t just a celebration of what the publication has achieved - it’s a celebration of the people who have ensured it will continue to thrive for decades to come. It’s important for people to know...

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