From Rock to Doc: The Neil Ratner Story

Neil Ratner, MD, has played remarkably divergent roles in his life, initially as a rock-and-roll drummer and staging entrepreneur, working with the likes of Edgar Winter and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. But he always had an interest in medicine, so eventually he ditched his successful rock career and went to medical school, later becoming an anesthesiologist who embraced the then-novel concept of delivering non-OR anesthesia, which he helped pioneer.

It was through his work as an anesthesiologist for a plastic surgeon that he ended up meeting Michael Jackson, of all people, who immediately liked Dr. Ratner and his rock-and-roll roots.

His rock music and medicine careers enjoyed some precipitous highs but also significant lows, all of which he candidly details in his book “Rock Doc.”

Perhaps surprisingly, however, our interview with Dr. Ratner is mostly not about his rock-and-roll past or his work doing non-OR anesthesiology, but instead about what he is up to today: serving as a kind of public health announcer for a radio station in, fittingly, Woodstock, N.Y. His work interpreting medical news—particularly as it relates to COVID-19—for the station (WDST; 100.1 MHz) has made a difference in the public’s understanding of the complicated issues brought about by the pandemic.