Some people were just meant to write a book about their lives. That’s certainly the case with the Rock Doc Neil Ratner. Neil’s journey encompasses people like Edgar Winter and Rick Derringer, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson and Nelson Mandela add in a medical career, organized crime, legal trouble and charity work in Africa and you have one hell of a tale to tell. Neil was kind enough to spend some time telling that tale and you don’t want to miss listening to this interview!
Please press Play below to listen to the MisplacedStraws.com Conversation with Neil Ratner:
On hooking up with Rick Derringer – You know I was in between my sophomore and junior year of college at UVM and I took an apartment in the city and I was in a training program to be an operating room technician. It was the summer of ’69 and I heard music coming from upstairs and lo and behold I go in and here’s this guy with a guitar I didn’t really recognize and says “Hey I’m Rick Derringer” , I said “Rick Derringer of the McCoys?” and we became fast friends. 2:50
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Rick Derringer & Neil Ratner |
On working with Emerson, Lake & Palmer – At the height of their popularity particularly in Europe they were like the Beatles, I mean we would we could sell out major arenas we could sell out major stadiums and people around the hotel I mean everything you would think from superstar status that’s what these guys have. It was another education for me, you know, going from a tour bus to a Lear jet, but you know it it presented a whole different set of problems and possibilities and you know I had to get used to the fact that I was now working with a group with 3 stars whereas previously most groups have one front man whatever. These were 3 individual people each a star in their own right and that made going on the road with them quite challenging because everybody wanted to be the star but obviously everybody always wasn’t the star and so you know you have to you have to be a bit of a psychologist and bit of a babysitter and everything else but it was it was a great experience. 8:20
On Lemmy’s gift to Keith Emerson – So one of my jobs as the road manager, tour manager for Emerson, Lake & Palmer was carrying Keith’s knives. Now back in the day, obviously you could do that and and there was no TSA so people weren’t freaking out about that. But the story of one knife, his main knife…that knife was given to him by a roadie from The Nice now that roadie went on to become quite famous and his name was Lemmy…when he left to form his own group he wanted to Keith to have something special and one of his prized possessions was his knife and Keith use that knife with the ELP to stab his piano 10:10
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Keith Emerson’s keyboard with knives in it |
On being the production manager for the Dark Side of the Moon tour – Prior to the Dark Side of the Moon the Floyd were not that huge you know. Think about their previous albums and and where they were, they weren’t ELP you know, it was Dark Side of the Moon that really pushed them over the top to a certain extent. So, yeah, it was a great tour, this is an amazing band we were doing incredible things. We knew it was great but again, you know, as I like to say it’s a lot different putting on a pair of headphones and smoking a joint and listening to the Dark Side of the Moon album than having to be on the road and be responsible for the production. 16:45
On being one of the first anesthesiologists to set up operating rooms in doctor’s offices – I noticed that doctors really wanted operate in their office. In Europe they were doing it extensively and in some parts of America not so much in New York City. So I thought with the kind of level of experience that I had, because I had concentrated in my residency on the lesser cases, I always found it fascinating to be able to take drugs, mix them together, and put somebody in a semi-conscious state where you could actually inject local anesthesia and do surgery on someone. So that was sort of my area of expertise and I knew I could do that in an office, even though most anesthesiologist shied away from that because the drugs were not good for office-based surgery nor where the monitors. Everybody was afraid, you can go into an office the office is not equipped well, the drugs are bad and what do you do if you get into trouble and so nobody had taken that leap and I said well “I’ll do it that, I’ll take the leap” and I was one of the first to actually devote myself (to it). From the day I left residency I never worked in a hospital in 20 years. I created the practice of office-based anesthesia. 21:50
On meeting Michael Jackson – I was sitting in the doctor’s lounge 2 months before the end of my residency I read a little piece in the New York Post, the gossip column, of one of the local New York papers, which mentioned that Michael Jackson had gone to see his favorite cosmetic surgeon in New York, doctor so-and-so, and I realized that I knew that guy sort of. He was in the hospital I was in I’ve seen him many times and I thought that’s the guy should approach and so I approached him he bought into my idea and 8 years later Michael came back to the office. 23:40
On Michael Jackson’s addiction issues – Michael had a problem. I mean first of all yes you had a problem which many doctors had tried to treat in the classical way with sleep medication. By the time I met Michael he was not sleeping and addicted to sleep medication which is not an uncommon story with people with sleep disorders, but more than that this was not necessarily an everyday thing it was particularly intense before you had something like a concert or a video shoot or something like that and then it got out of control and he wouldn’t eat and he wouldn’t drink and so it was worse than just not sleeping and he was, you know, at that point when he reached out to me, he was severely dehydrated, his nutrition was awful, he looked terrible, his color was awful and on top of that he didn’t sleep at all so as a friend and physician I came up with a a solution that I felt comfortable with ,in my hands, as a contemporary stopgap measure to help him through these times and hopefully converting to something, you know, better lifestyle kind of choices later on. 27:00

On first using propofol on Michael – When Michael reached out to me I felt that (propofol) could be part of a solution with fluids, nutrition electrolytes, things like that to get him in a better shape for what he needed to do. I created this out of my expertise and I explained it very carefully to Michael. Obviously he didn’t get the message that, you know, this was okay in my hands but, you know, I’m an anesthesiologist I was very well trained, well versed in the administration of anesthesia , the administration the medication. You know it was never done in any other way then as if we were in an operating room somewhere with full monitoring with emergency equipment etc. etc. 30:50
On meeting Nelson Mandela – Mandela was one of the most amazing experiences, with all of my experiences you know certainly the time with Mandela stands out. I first got to meet him on the HIStory tour when we played South Africa he was the president of South Africa and I had told Michael before we ever went to South Africa “look man this guy’s my hero if I could just shake his hand, get a picture”. I talk about it in the book where Mandela came into the dressing room after first concert we did in Cape Town and went down the line and and I got to meet him and shake his hand and then unbelievably Michael called me down for private pictures with him and Mandela. And then a few years later we had done some concerts, charity concerts, half of the money going to Mandela and as a fiftieth birthday present to me Michael called me one day and said “Hey I’m going to give you a birthday present”, which is an amazing thing anyway as a Jehovah’s Witness , but I said “you don’t to give me anything”, he said “no no no remember we raised the money? Well you’re going to South Africa with me we’re gonna give Mandela the check”. 34:20
On child molestation accusations against Michael – When I first went on tour with him and the little boy appeared it creeped me out a little bit because I was aware of some of the allegations previously which didn’t involve these kids that we’re talking about, these young men in Leaving Neverland, these were some of the earlier allegations and I was just surprised that there was a little boy around. I talked to Michael about it I talked to security about it and they said “Hey you know it’s such and such’s son, they know, parents know, it’s cool”. And I talk to Michael about it and, you know, he and I often talked about things like that he just saw it differently than others. Michael was very hung up about his lost childhood. He liked to relate to kids because of the innocence of childhood and he felt that they were more honest and real than the adults that were around him. Even when I would say “yeah but you’re a 50 year old man…society doesn’t accept it” he said “no, whatever, there’s nothing here it’s innocent.”
Certainly I had my eyes wide open after that incident and by the end of the tour I realized that it was all bullshit you know that it that you know these guys were like brothers or cousins or or whatever that people really did have it wrong. I’m an anesthesiologist, most anesthesiologists are great observers and I would not have tolerated that, I mean I would have had to stop it, I would have had to make sure it never happened again, I could not be associated with anything like that and I have to say in the 8 years that I was with Michael nothing, nothing . Was the a man child? Yes. But did any of that kind of, you know, sexual behavior go on? No. Not that I was aware of or saw, if I had been aware of it or saw it or thought in the slightest way that something was happening my actions would have been much different than what they were. I feel badly now that he isn’t here to defend himself. 37:15
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