Nothing Funny About It: R.I.P. New Yorker Cartoonist Leo Cullum

The New Yorker is known for its funny cartoons, but a lot of them aren’t funny in the sense that they make you laugh. Many of them – too many in my opinion – are the kind of intellectual variety of “comedy” where upon reading it, one nods and puts one’s index finger to one’s mouth and says “My, that is most amusing.” Of course, if something is actually funny you would never say something like that; you would be too busy laughing and milk would be shooting out of your nostrils — and if it's really, really funny, out of your ears.

One New Yorker cartoonist who was genuinely ha-ha funny was Leo Cullum, who passed away this week at age 68. Cullum drew hundreds of laff-riots for the venerable weekly for over 30 years, while holding down a day job as a commerical pilot for TWA. (You can read his New York Times obit here.) Looking over some Cullum classics at the Cartoon Bank website (where you can buy framed prints of your favorite cut-ups), I found myself laughing out loud many times.









Another reason I am saddened by the loss o’ Leo is because I had the good fortune to work with him in 2003 on a commercial for CitiBusiness, the business-to-business division of Citibank. When we came up with the idea below, one of my creative directors said “Wouldn't it be great if we could get Leo Cullum to do this?” so we looked him up. Leo was drawn to the opportunity to work with us like a mutt to a Scotch & Toilet Water.


Our project was done via email between NYC and Leo’s digs in Malibu, so I never got a chance to meet the man. But I remember thinking at the time that I should send him a copy of my favorite cartoon of his (seen below) and ask him to autograph it and send it back.

RIP and TCB LC. Let's go out Rock Turtleneck-style with “New Yorker Cartoon,” a sunny yet bittersweet tune off the new album by Jenny & Johnny, featuring the lovely & talented Jenny Lewis.

Keith Richards Writes About Life and He Doesn't Mean the Cereal, Baby

The Rock Turtleneck release of 2010 is not music but a book: Life, the autobiography of Keith Richards, which comes out Tuesday.

The title is as simple and inevitable as the riff to "Jumpin' Jack Flash."

As a Life excerpt in Rolling Stone mentioned, the Jack in question was Keith's Welly-wearing gardener, who happened to be walking by the window when Mick & Keith were trying to turn this riff into a song back in '67.


Turns out Keef's memory is as indestructible as his liver - Life is already being placed by critics on the toppermost shelf of rock memoirs, right up there with Bob Dylan's Chronicles Vol. 1 and... well, it's a surprisingly thin shelf.

Keith has jumped on the press junket circuit harder than Tom Cruise on Oprah's couch. Here is a nice two-part Life interview with a British cat named Andrew Marr.

Part I:

Part II:


Order Life on Amazon:

Hail Hail Chuck Berry: Happy 84th Birthday

John Lennon famously said "If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry.'"

As usual, Lennon was to the point and right on the money. No single individual is more responsible for mutating jazz, blues and country into that wound up being what we know now as rock & roll. And unlike Lennon, he is still very much with us.

Chuck, who turned 84 on Monday, was also a poet and, starting with his first #1 hit, 1955's "Maybelline," laid out much of the major thematic terrain that exists in rock & roll to this day: girls, cars, school, dates, rock & roll and picking up your girl at school in your car to take her on a date and listen to some rock & roll.



Lennon, who would have turned 70 last week, could also have said, "If you're looking for the personification of Chinese water torture, you might call it Yoko Ono."

Here they all are together on the Mike Douglas show in 1972 doing my favorite Berry song, "Memphis, Tennessee." This is perhaps Yoko's greatest work of surrealist performance art, but it would have increased tenfold had they gotten Douglas himself in on the act, perhaps singing a counter-melody of "Accentuate the Positive."


55 years after scoring his first #1, Chuck is still gettin' it done at age 84. He still plays most weeks at his club in his native St. Louis, and heads out on the road, gets paid cash and advance and runs through his hits with a local pickup band. Here's a fantastic clip of 70s-vintage Chuck "Reelin' and Rockin" — and Duckwalkin' too.


HB & TCB CB
Make sure you have some Chuck in your collection - do you want to be one of those people who waits till someone dies till you say, "Maybe I should get some Chuck Berry"? Here's a good place to start.

Buy The Definitive Chuck Berry on iTunes here

I Shall Be Released: Songs for the Chilean Miners

‘Twas a genuine miracle to see Luis Urzúa, the 33rd of 33 rescued Chilean miners and their foreman, emerge intact from 69 subterranean days. Watching the rescue live on CNN, Capt. Sully Sullenberger said “That’s f$%#ing amazing.”

While the miners aren’t talking about their experiences just yet, it’s common knowledge that Rock Turtleneck’s August post of goodwill for the miners was a major factor in keeping their spirits alive through trying times. So let's enjoy a bit of rock & roll closure as we welcome the boys back to civilization with a newly apropos set of tunes.

George Harrison/Paul Simon, “Here Comes the Sun/Homeward Bound”
This dream duet gets my vote for best musical performance in SNL history, notwithstanding the time Ashlee Simpson got caught lip-synching and blamed the drummer. And the set list – one from George, one from Paul – seems tailor-made for the mindset of a newly-freed miner.

George Harrison et Paul Simon
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Stevie Wonder, “Higher Ground”
I don’t think the Tylenol-shaped module that lifted the miners up 2,000 feet from the mine to civilization was equipped with an on-board sound system but if it was, I hope it played this inspirational work of funkified genius as it assended to freedom.


Hank Williams, "I Saw the Light"
When Hank Sr. said he saw the light in his country-gospel standard, he meant it literally and figuratively. I’m sure the miners felt the same way.


Bob Dylan, The Band & Friends, “I Shall Be Released”
Leave it to Zimmerman to write the ultimate anthem of liberation, though I wouldn't be surprised if he was thinking about his recording contract when he wrote this:
I see my light come shining,
From the west down to the east,
Any day now any day now
I shall be released

As with the Chilean miner rescue effort, everyone and their mother is pitching in on this Last Waltz finale.

The Last Waltz - I Shall be Released

Welcome back and godspeed gents. Can't wait for the Javier Bardem/Antonio Bandaras film.

Happy 10/10/10

10cc, "I'm Not in Love"


10,000 Maniacs with Michael Stipe, "To Sir, With Love"
(live at Clinton Innaugural, 1993)


Ten Years After, "Goin' Home"
(live at Woodstock)

Unhappy Birthday: Celebrating John Lennon's 70th with his best LP John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band

It’s become an annual Rock Turtleneck tradition to honor John Lennon’s birthday by debunking the Yoko Ono “Imagine” PR machine.

Since John’s death in 1980, Yoko has made it her mission to whitewash Lennon, one of the most angry, bitter and brilliant SOBs to ever pick up a guitar and sing, into a super-wussy peacenick/dreamer. It’s definitely working, as this new uber-Utopian Google home page animation shows.


To coincide with Lennon’s 70th birthday tomorrow, Yoko has reissued, remastered and repackaged her late husband’s catalog yet again. This includes a hits package called Power to the People that includes not a single song from Lennon’s first and greatest solo album: 1970s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.

It’s easy to see why: John Lennon/
Plastic Ono Band is fierce, angry, bitter, confused, compelling and absolutely brilliant.

Its message isn't "Imagine there's no heaven," it's "My life is a living Hell." In short, completely off-message with the Lennon brand strategy. An officially licensed Lennon T-shirt with one of his doodles and a lyric like “Mother, you had me, but I never had you” wouldn’t exactly fly off the racks.


John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band represented many things to John. It was a declaration of independence from The Beatles, of course. But it was also John’s way of coming to terms with his horrific childhood, in which his Daddy Freddy Lennon abandoned him (he tried to come back when John made him big, but John just wrote him a cheque and told him to bugger off), his Mum Julia gave him to his Aunt Mimi, only to be killed by a drunk driver as they were reconciling when John was in his teens.

It's clear in his incredible singing on "Remember" and elsewhere that these wounds were still very much open.


Lennon had more issues than National Geographic, but thankfully for us, he channeled them into some amazing music, as in my favorite track on the record, the bluesy “I Found Out”:

I heard something
About my Ma and my Pa
They didn’t want me
So they made me a star


The record was a precursor to punk in using the absolute minium for maximum effect: just John’s filthy Epiphone Casino, Ringo’s brilliantly spare drumwork and bass by Hamburg chum and Revolver cover artist Klaus Voorman. It was produced by Phil Spector who showed there was much more to his production genius than the Wall of Sound.

JL/POB was the first time a major artist laid it all out on the line for all the world to hear. Soon the Brutally Honest Confessional LP became a rite of passage for any artist worth their salt. Other examples include Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, Sinead O’Connor’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got and Kurt Cobain on Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York.



Birthday Boy John Lennon is someone worth celebrating, not because he dreamed of a better world – we all do, pretty much every day.

He deserves it for putting honesty above vanity, which seems to get rarer by the day.

Buy John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band on iTunes here

Mavis Staples & Jeff Tweedy: They Are Not Alone (And Neither Are You)

A sure sign one has reached elder-statesman (or -woman) status in rock is playing the role of comeback-producer; using one's celebrity and gravitas to shine a new light on a deserving artist who may have fallen out of vogue. Jack White did an amazing job with his idol Loretta Lynn a few years back (and is now working on a project with female Elvis Wanda Jackson). And our hero Jeff Tweedy of Wilco has just done the same for the great Mavis Staples. Her new Tweedy-produced effort You Are Not Alone was released on September 24 to rave reviews.



Mr. Tweedy, an artist in his creative prime, gushing great songs, wrote two tracks for the record, the title cut and "Only the Lord Knows," both of which fit Mavis to a T.


Mavis, of course, was the lead singer of the Staples Singers, one of the great gospel groups of all time, who transcended their genre and scored several huge hits, thanks to Mavis's wellspring vocals and the amazingly understated guitar work of her dad Pops Staples.


She also dated Bob Dylan in the mid-1960s, and he supposedly wanted to marry her. (I guess Pops put the kybosh on that.) And Rock Turtleneck readers surely remember Mavis from her memorable cameo in The Last Waltz, where her duet with The Band on "The Weight" is one of the highlights of the film — as she says at the end, "beautiful."


Jeff and Mavis will be doing their thing for David Letterman tonight and Stephen Colbert on Wednesday. Watch the shows and buy the record. And remember, you are not alone.

Buy Mavis Staples' You Are Not Alone on iTunes here