Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I made a lot of mistakes, took a lot of wrong turns, but in the end, I had an amazing experience in the music industry. The best of the people that I know, they love what I do. I have fans who are guys who are people who have fans. About a month ago, I sat in with the A list of players, and I'm very proud of that, that I can get up with a group of guys who are the elite and they enjoy what I do.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: I'm Diana Earley, and I've spent most of my life learning firsthand what privilege actually costs.
The legacy control, the family expectations. The guilt of feeling trapped in a life everyone thinks you should be grateful for. If you've ever wondered why having everything still feels like something's missing, you're in the right place.
Welcome to Pressures of Privilege.
My guest today got kicked out of four schools before he turned 16.
Andover Military School, a public school with gun scanners. None of them could figure out what to do with him. But here's the thing. While he was failing out of those schools, he had a record deal. At 15, Ned Albright went on to build a 60 year career in music. He wrote songs for the Monkees and Glen Campbell, and he played sessions with Michael Jackson, Dr. John and the Meters. His band opened for Bob Marley. He was in the room when Bob Dylan walked over and played on the Hammond organ and said, let's record that tune. That song ended up on a Dusty Springfield album. He's got a hundred songs registered with bmi. His music opened every Dylan show. He played on Montego Bay and worked on the Sugar Sugar sessions with the Archies. But that's not why he's here. Ned is here because he spent his life around successful, wealthy people, and he's watched what that does to them. He's known people who died because of money and privilege. He's been in recovery for nearly 44 years in March. And somewhere along the way, he figured out that success isn't measured by wealth. He now teaches self hypnosis, volunteers with kids, runs marathons. Well, he did run marathons and sits on the board of an environmental nonprofit. His philosophy, it's about what you give that allows you to receive. Ned Albright, welcome to the Pressures of Privilege.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Thank you so much, Diana. You are my old and dear friend, and I love you, and I'm happy to be here talking to you. I hope I don't make an idiot of myself, which I've been known to do, but I'm so happy, and I'm so happy you asked me I'm so proud of you for having this show, which deals with a very interesting topic. There's a lot to talk about, so go ahead and ask me any questions, and let's. Let's get going and we'll have a chat.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: So you got kicked out of four schools, but at 15, you had a record deal.
How does that work?
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Well, speaking of privilege, I think it sort of ties into that because I was 15 years old, I had been kicked out of schools, and the last one I went to was called the professional children's school.
My dad later on would say that's where he learned to be a professional child.
And anyway, I was at this school with a lot of celebrities and great artists. I mean, Yo Yo Ma was there when I was there. He was a lot younger than me, but a lot of the incredible Juilliard talent was there.
The ballet, all the prima ballerinas were all there.
Kids who were on Broadway were there.
There were rock and roll, like the McCoys were a band that were there, and there were other rock and rollers that were around.
So it was a really fantastic group of people.
And it was different than any school I'd been to because you didn't necessarily have to go to classes because they figured if you were working, you were working, and you would be able to do your homework and hand it in. Well, there were a number of us in that school who took advantage of that and skipped a lot of classes. And at the end, they kicked me out because they said, you're skipping too many classes.
And they said, we're going to have to.
We're going to have to throw you out. And I said, well, let me make it easy for you. I'll just retire.
So I retired from high school at that point. But at that time, one of the guys in my class was a kid named Dennis Kirby, and his dad, Durward Kirby, who some of your older listening audience might know.
Durward was on a show with another guy named Gary Moore. That was a big talk show show at that time, and they were sort of funny. And anyway, somebody had a connection and got us a record deal.
And not only did they get us a record deal, but they had the knowledge of the record business to know that if you paid a certain amount of money, you could get your record to as far as number 40 on the top 100 chart.
And after that, you were kind of on your own, and the records had turned, but we got to number 40 on the top hundred chart, and we were in a couple of magazines and they do PR for you and things like that. But it was a very interesting. It was the first time that I'd been in a real professional recording studio with real professional engineers and well known producers.
And it was great. And mostly they just had us sit around while the professional session players played on the song that they thought was going to be our hit.
And on the B side, back in those days you had 45s and there was your A song and your B song. And on the B side we were allowed to do some playing, but we sang on both.
It was our voices and that was really fun. And I also got to play a little piano part on the B side, which was fun.
And that was my entry into the record business. And I liked it.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Yeah. 60 years, that's, that's a long time.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Yes. And I liked it and I loved the people in it.
They were like minded with me and, and they were obsessed with making good music and making pe. Making music that felt good and made other people feel good. Yeah. And it, it evolved after that. I mean, I had so many adventures between when I really got to be a working professional.
I was in bands that were dangerous.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: What do you mean by dangerous?
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Well, one of the bands I was in, I used to say that it was three heroin addicts and a drummer.
And I had never been involved in that kind of deep dive into narcotics.
But they, and they weren't in the city, they were in Connecticut.
And I, you know, I, I, I went out there and they were all in high school and their parents, I was, they were shuffling me around from house to house and finally I wound up in a, the apartment of a Hell's Angels group because the parents of the other guys in the group didn't want an extra kid in their house. So anyway, I was hooked up with the Hells Angels. That was very educational.
My education has been augmented by real education so that I could tell you stories.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Well, like your famous one where, you know, when Bob Dylan walked into a room where you were playing the piano and he liked what he heard.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: Yeah. I'll tell you, the genesis of that was I had been hired by that time I was a professional producer, writer, working for an incredible, magnificent hall of Fame talent named Jeff Berry. And Jeff berry had written 60 top 10 records.
He was also a great mentor for me. And I just to kind of let you know how that happened because that's also kind of a weird story. I was living in a crash pad. I had been in a Mexican prison. And I came back and my family Were not pleased with me.
And so I was sort of scrounging around in Manhattan and there was a crash pad with 10 guys that lived in a studio apartment.
And I was up on 93rd street on the east side, and I was one of those guys. And it was used as an after hours party house.
And when people were in there partying, I would sit in the bathroom because there was a nice echo.
And I'd play my guitar and some guy needed to use the bathroom, but he was standing outside and he was listening to me. And he said, what's that you're playing? I said, oh, it's a song I just wrote.
And he looked at me and he said, well, I'm going to. You have to be ready because when I call you, I'm going to take you to the Record Plant, which is a great studio, and I don't know what hour, it'll probably be late at night. And I have a friend there that will record you singing that, you know, singing that song and. And maybe a couple others.
So a couple days later he called me and he said, I'll pick you up. It was midnight. And he picked me up and he. We got in a cab and he had a big bowl of hashish on a mail and he lit it up in the cab and all three of us, the driver and the two of us were just totally like that.
And when we got out, we went into the studio. I recorded three songs. One take playing the guitar and singing.
And then the engineers said to me, do you. Can you play any other instrument? I said, I play the piano. And he said, well, so one take, all three songs, the whole thing probably took about 35 minutes.
And my friend who had brought me said, okay, I'm going to take you to meet someone that, you know, will let you know how, you know, if they like it.
So that's when I met Jeff Berry. And he played this tape with three songs on it.
Then he went back to the first one and played it again.
And he said, who's playing piano on this? And I said, that's me. And he said, well, I'd like to hire you as a producer and songwriter for my team. And Jeff was the guy who produced the Archies and the Monkees and several other things. And he had so many hits by so many people.
And he still, you know, he still does. I mean, he's in the hall of fame and he was a great guy. And so that's really.
That put me on the map. We were on the COVID of Cashbox Magazine. And we were being feted. And we were hearing ourselves on the radio all the time. It was like a good dream.
And at one point we got a call from two guys named Artie and Happy Traum. They were folk singers of note. And somebody wanted to make them a little more rock and rolly.
And so they hired us.
And my friend Stephen Soules and I went up and produced this record at Bearsville Studio, owned by Albert Grossman, was Bob Dylan's manager, but they had broken up, but he was Bob Dylan's manager. So as the story goes, we recorded with the guys and they had a big party to celebrate. And every. All these guys, Van Morrison, Chris Christofferson, you know, on the band, all these guys came into the studio. It was packed, and everybody was listening and commenting about how nice it was. And they were playing it over and over again. And people were just having a nice time.
I had heard the song so many times myself that I went out to the studio because they had a beautiful Bosendorfer piano there.
And I was kind of drawn to it.
And I just sat down and I started to play. And I just was playing a song that I had written. You know, it was kind of new, and I was seeing how it felt on the piano.
And for whatever reason, I still don't know Bob Dylan who had come to the party. And everybody was like, you know, bowing and scraping. Bob was the king of all of that stuff.
And he came out into the room. So it was just he, you know, he and I were, you know, and, and so I, he, I, I. When he came in, he picked up a guitar and I thought, wow. I just stopped playing. I thought, well, it's Bob Dylan. Whatever he's playing, he plays, I'm going to play along.
So when I stopped, he started staring at me like, you know, very intensely staring into my eyes. It was kind of eerie and weird.
And I didn't know him at all, except that he was a huge superstar. But he started playing the guitar. Like, he didn't play guitar with buzzing on the strings, making a note and, and clamming it. And anyway, I got a little freaked out. And he kept staring at me. And so finally I just thought, well, if he's not going to play, I'm going to play. So I started to play what I was playing.
And he looked at me and he said, I'll do an impression of Bob Dylan. He said, hey, who wrote that tune?
I like that tune. So I said, oh, well, you know, I told him I wrote that. And he said, we'll play it again.
And so he walked over to the Hammond organ and he turned it on. And so it was Bob Dylan on the Hammond and me on the piano.
And it was insanely great sounding. I had no idea that Bob Dylan was such a.
It was really good on the Hammond organ.
So we started to play, and with the Hammond and me banging away, the guys in the control room could hear it.
And one by one, they started coming out and sitting the guys from the band. The drummer sat down at the drums, and the bass player was there playing his. And then anybody was playing anything, you know, acoustic. There were a couple acoustic guitars, a couple electrics.
There were people that wanted to sing in the choruses. And it just was sounding like a million bucks. Everybody's kind of excited. And Dylan looks up and says, hey, this sounds great.
Let's record this tune. So I said, oh, wow. I've got a super session here.
All these incredibly, you know, big stars, they all love the tune. Let's do it.
So the engineer came in and he said, well, gee, Bob, I better call Albert.
And everybody kind of got a weird look. And he came back about, you know, about two minutes later, he came back and he said, Albert says, if you guys aren't out of the studio in 15 minutes, you know, the police are going to come and arrest all of you. It was like, oh, my God. It just was like the. The balloon just got burst.
And.
And it was sad because everybody was. It was sounding. It was sounding amazing. And the song was a really good song. So it was great players playing a really good song.
And poof.
Up in smoke. And so we all went over to a guy named Jeff Muldar's house and sat. And Dylan sat at the organ. They had an organ there. Dylan sat at the organ for the rest of the night.
I think it was 5am when his wife called and said, is Bob there? And somebody came out to tell him, hey, your wife's on the phone. And he said, taylor, I'm not here.
So we played until everybody finally dropped. And that was the story. And the next day, Albert Grossman, God rest his soul, because we were there using his studio, it was his group that he was managing, etc.
And he came up next to me and just started leaning on me. And he said, ned, this is like a plantation.
I'm the owner, and all of these guys are my slaves. And I went, oh, my God.
I had never heard anything like that. And Albert Grossman was a very revered guy in the record industry. And he had, you know, very, had a important role in Bob Dylan's early career and all of that.
But that, those, there are lessons you learn in rock and roll and that was one of them.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: But they had had a falling out, right? Is that, isn't that why you guys were kicked out?
[00:19:57] Speaker A: That's why they had a big falling out. And Bob had quit. Albert, as you know, had fired him as a manager. And I'm sure he was pissed off, but his attitude just made me feel like, oh, wow, this guy who's so powerful is also extraordinarily mean.
And.
But, you know, whatever.
But it was, it's, it's a great memory for me. Even though there was, it was never.
We didn't get to record anything, you know, but it was a great memory and a great way. And later on when Dylan had the Rolling Thunder review, it was kind of a ragtag bunch of guys who were great players.
But a friend of mine, Bobby Neuorth, who was kind of right hand guy for Dylan for many years, was sort of in charge of, you know, organizing the band and everything. He made it so that before Dylan came on stage, the band played a couple of numbers and one of them was my song called Good Love is Hard to Find.
And you know, that's how the, the, the show started. And then Dylan would walk out and do be Dylan, if you want to hear a depraved story.
And this is kind of like along the lines of you may or may not want to use this. But at that time they were sort of auditioning people and also just adding people like Joni Mitchell was in on it. And you know, various rock stars came and you know, sat in with the band and stuff like that.
So they sent me 12 tickets for a show in Hartford, Connecticut.
And I thought, and this is how my, you know, this shows how badly my brain was working at that time because I was a full on drug addict by then and drunk.
And anyway, I said, wow, I have 12 tickets in there. I can get a lot of money for these, you know. So I sold the 12 tickets and didn't go to the show. And my friends were kind of mad at me because they, they called me to come up to the stage and sit in with them. I was in Manhattan, they were on stage. We gave him 12 tickets. Where is he? So anyway, I, you know that. But you know, you, these kind of things, you know, they're lessons.
These are lessons you learn the hard way.
I often say to people, you can't have success without failure. Failure is your path to success.
And I truly believe that. And I had a lot of failures to prove that. And also a lot of good things have happened to me that have led me to success of certain kinds in the music business.
I was kind of like whatever that show was 90ft from stardom or something like that, you know, I. I got to play with and do some performing with and with various people over. Over the years.
So I have no regrets really about anything.
But I do have to acknowledge that I made a lot of mistakes, took a lot of wrong turns, but in the end, I had an amazing experience in the music industry and I to this day have lots of friends from many years. And one thing I'll say to you, which I'm proud of, is that the best of the people that I know, they love what I do.
Everybody else, I'm not so sure, but yeah. So I have fans who are guys who are people who have fans.
And that goes on today.
Just about a month ago, I sat in with the A list of players and James Taylor was there, but he, you know, it was a funeral and we were all there and they all embraced me and love, you know, all the players. So I'm very happy about that and I'm very proud of that, that I can get up with a group of guys who are the elite and they enjoy what I do. So.
And that still goes on.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: How many years after that time when you scalp those tickets for the money, how many years later did you finally get sober?
[00:25:06] Speaker A: I'm going to say it was probably.
And it's funny because Bob Neuorth, who I told you about, who was like a maniac, I saw him, I knew him when he was not sober and he did some crazy things that I thought, oh, my God, somebody's going to arrest that guy.
But he was a brilliant guy.
But anyway, I'm going to say it was because the Rolling Thunder Review was in the 70s, I believe. Yeah, it was probably in the late 70s, somewhere in there, in the mid late 70s, actually, in 1980, I had heard that New Earth got sober and I thought, that guy got sober.
Wow.
Wow. If he did it, maybe I could. So I went out to LA and he took me to my first AA meeting in 1980.
And I walked into the meeting and I listened and I heard everybody and I went, oh, my God, these people are insane.
I do not belong here. This is. They're really crazy.
Two years later, after diving further and deeper into the hole, I went to Newert and I said, I think I better go to one more of those AA meetings with you. And he took me to the same clubhouse with a lot of the same people.
And I found it all really funny and wow, I knew I was in the right place.
So that's pretty interesting story because it's true.
And at that time in 1982, in March 27, I got sober and it changed my entire life.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: Can you talk more about that?
[00:27:12] Speaker A: I can. And I will tell you that in the beginning, I was like what they call a dry drunk.
And I just was like, I was having a great time and I was staying sober, but I was going to AA meetings and I had bad behavior, in particular with women.
I think I was kind of loose and, you know, juggling and that kind of thing. And then something happened and I realized I also gained about 40 pounds of weight because after the AA meetings, we would go out to the coffee shop and I'd have hot fudge sundaes and stuff my face and eat too much. And that's all part of the addictive personality. You know, there are substitutions you can make that, that, you know, will be like, you know, the addiction.
Only it's not, you know, booze or drugs now it's sugar and ice cream or whatever it is, or eating too much, you know, eating addictively. And so I started to suffer from those kind of things.
And one day I just thought, I can't, I, I, I don't really think I can sustain myself that way. Something bad will happen to me. And so one of, and I think it was new Earth and said, well, we're gonna, I'm gonna take you running. And I said, running.
Now, I grew up an athlete. I played baseball, basketball, and football year round. And I loved sports. I was, and I was good at it.
But when I got, and I was great in high school at it. But when I finally made my last stand in school, my sports career had basically came to a halt.
And. But when newer took me for the run, something happened.
And I thought, oh, my God, like, you know, I, I actually started to run a little bit and I started to run where I, I could run like a mile or two miles or something like that. And then somebody that I knew from the program said to me, hey, there's a, there's a 10k going on.
Why don't you come run with me? And I said, well, what's that? He said, It's 6.2 miles. I. 6.2 miles. I, I can almost make three.
And he said, oh, no, you can do it. So I went And I did it.
And he said, wow, that's great. I said, wow, I can't believe I did that. And he said, well, you know, next week there's a 10 miler. I said, 10 miler. I. You know, the 6 was. Oh, my God, the 6 was so hard. He said, no, no, you can do it.
So I went. And not only did I do it, but I passed my friend at mile eight and went ahead of him. He just said, go. And I did. And so then I made that. Then I started getting the idea I should run a marathon.
And I did.
And after that marathon, I got a really.
A knee injury that I thought, oh, that's it. I'll never be able to do that. But I had a friend in New York that I was visiting, and she was the physical therapist for all the ballet dancers and the basketball players.
And I said to her, I don't know if I can do it. She goes, oh, I'll fix you up in a second. So she did two sessions with me, and I was fine and showed me how to maintain, you know, how to get over little injuries like that.
And so then, like the addict that I am, I got addicted to marathon running. And I ran 36 marathons.
I was in London, Paris, Venice, Berlin.
I was all over the United States. I went. Went, you know, various different places.
I ran the New York Marathon three times. I ran the LA Marathon five or six times.
And I, you know, I just.
Whenever there was a marathon, I think one year I did five in the year, maybe six.
And, you know, other years I made two, two or three, but I did it. And after my 36th marathon, I was running in the hills in Los Angeles, and I felt dizzy, and I knew something was wrong, and I stopped and I walked for a little bit. And then I felt a little better, so I finished the run. And.
But that's.
That made me think. So I wound up going to a heart doctor, a very esteemed heart doctor. And he did all the tests and all that. And he said.
He said, well, your test. Your tests are really perfect.
And I said, wow. I said, well, what's the.
How accurate are those tests? He said, It's 95% accurate. And I said, well, then I'm one of your 5%.
And he said, well, because I knew something was wrong. And he said, well, okay, well, we're going to monitor you then. And so I continued doing what I was doing, and I had a few more incidents, and each time I knew something was wrong. And then one day, and, you know, my Wife, Bobby.
I was getting up, it was the morning, and I said, God, I don't feel good.
I'm going to go for a run.
And she had seen a poster on the road somewhere that said, if you're having chest pains in the morning, you're probably having a heart attack.
And so she said, I saw that sign. You're not going for a run.
We have to go. So I said, oh, okay, I'll go to the clinic. So I went to our local clinic, and I drove up and they took an EKG, and they said, the paramedics will be here in 10 minutes to take you to the hospital. And I said, oh, no, no, no, no, no.
I can drive myself there. I feel okay to drive down to the hospital. And they said, well, that would be against medical opinion. And I said, okay, well, I'll go against medic. I'll drive myself down.
I said, besides, I have a couple of errands I need to run.
And they said, no way. You go directly to the emergency room. And I said, okay, all right.
So I drove down there, and the parking at the hospital was like 25 bucks or something. I said, I'm not spending 25 bucks to park my car. So I drove about four blocks away and parked it, and I walked back to the emergency room. And when I got there, they said, we've been expecting you. And they took me in and put me on a gurney. And the next thing I know, I was having a heart attack.
It happened just like that. And I felt it, and I knew it was happening. I went, oh, my God. I knew I shouldn't have come here. And five doctors from different locations came in, and they said, oh, yes, you should have. You're having a heart attack.
And so sure enough, they, you know, kept me overnight, and then they put in a stent in the widowmaker, in the widowmaker vein.
And.
And over the years, I now have eight coronary stents because, you know, heart disease is heart disease, and, you know, so. And I just. Even recently, this last week, I was in an ambulance going to a not so local hospital.
And I had said to them, I don't think I'm having a heart attack. And so when I got to the hospital, but I was in the urgent care, and they said, you know, you know, we're. We're. We're gonna, you know, the paramedics are going to take you. So anyway, after four hours, they agreed to let me go because they, they. All the things, the tests that they had taken that would maybe say that I was having a heart attack.
The. The urgent care misread the information, and the hospital that they took me to said, you're not having a heart attack right now. I said, well, thank God, and I will just monitor myself. And that's what's happening now in my life is I've got an appointment with my heart doctor, who is the guy who's put in all eight of my stents and is one of my favorite guys.
He also likes me because I can play music. And he is just loves music and wants to be able to play it, but he's a doctor and he's not quite.
You know, he's not quite there. But, you know, music is a gift.
It is truly a gift. And if you have it. And I'm very fortunate to have that gift.
You know, I love just sitting down. My life now is like, I play the piano every day for my own health, my mental health, my physical health.
It's good to use your hands and your fingers. That helps blood flow, the sound of music. And I'm always exploring and when it's not on a. You know, when you worked in. When I worked on recording sessions, I was always a little nervous and sometimes a lot nervous. And I think.
And I still did the job and everything, but it was a little stressful, but I did it. And I love music and all that, but now when I sit at home and just play to play, it's one of the best feelings.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: I was gonna let our listeners understand how I know you. Like, I met you back in 1995, Ned, when I think I had an ex boyfriend who was trying to woo me back, took me down to Cumberland island, you know, where I guess JFK Jr and Bessette got married there on this island. And.
And I met you there with this whole Carnegie crowd, and you were playing the guitar. And I remember thinking, God, this guy's really fun.
And I noticed you weren't drinking. You were, like, the first cool, sober person I ever met. And I remember asking you. I'm like, are you one of those, like, AA people? And you're like, hell, yeah. You were, like, proud of it. Well, I remember that night you took the afternoon off from, like, socializing to write a song. You wrote the night we hung Aunt Gertrude back on the wall because they had found some old, like, portrait in the attic, and they were going to hang her back on the wall. And you. You, like, took off for, like, three hours to write that song. Do you remember that?
[00:39:27] Speaker A: I will do. And I made a recording of it. A very nice recording of it. Yeah. Writing songs on Cumberland island, which is a magical place.
And by the way, I was there when John Jr. And Carolyn.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: Carolyn Bessette.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: Yeah, Carolyn Bessette. I was there. They were with. They had two couples that were their friends. So there were six of them.
And we had part. They were. It was a five day deal. It was actually maybe even more. We went out to a plantation and Baryshnikov had a dance studio. Howard Gilman had a big plantation and he sponsored Baryshnikov and the troupe and JFK Jr. And his group and Gogo and me and Lucy and we went out there and had a great time. We did a three legged race and we ate great food.
Yeah, Cumberland's a magical place. So when I wrote Gertrude, Lucy Flight, who was Gogo's cousin, came to me and said, hey, we've got this portrait that we're going to hang and would you write a song? I said, sure, what do you want? She said, can you call it the night we hung Aunt Gertrude back on the wall. And I was like, that was a very new twist for me. And I thought, wow, okay.
And I went to visit my friend George up at the Grange, that's at the far end of the island.
[00:41:08] Speaker B: And.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: And I fell asleep.
I was tired. I just fell asleep. Stacia had given me a couple of little tips about the story, but not all that much.
But I woke up and it was like, it just came out of me in one. You know, when you write a song in five to ten minutes, they're usually among the best you do because you're not thinking, you're just writing.
And so I wrote. Wrote the song complete with the full story. And afterwards. And I performed it. And you, you were there, you heard it afterwards. People were, they were stunned. It was like, well, how did you know that whole story? Because it was all true. And I didn't really know much, but it just all came out. And I was like, wow. You know, sometimes you just get lucky. You have to have good luck to be a good songwriter. I think too you now, some guys are, you know, just brilliant. But, you know, I. I've had very lucky moments in my life when songs just came out because they had to.
And that was one of them. And it was. It was really super fun. And we made a super cool recording of it.
There's a. There's an album called Ned and it has a picture of a gator on it. And my Do My Alligator song, which. And everything on the album is really good, and Cumberland became my place. I'm not really much of a performer. I don't go on the road or any of that kind of stuff. But in Cumberland, I went at least twice a year, and every time I went, I was the troubadour, a lot of fun, and.
And that's how I met you, which was one of the more fortunate moments in my life. I'm one of your biggest fans, and Bobby and I both love and adore you. And you were responsible for getting me at the Newport Folk Festival.
You arranged for me to be the entertainment on the roof of the hotel that hosted all the people who were in the festival.
And after they had done their shows, they'd come and go up to the roof and drink, and I would do my sets, and that was a super fun time. It would be unfair to not say that.
You're one of our favorite people.
You are an amazing, talented person yourself.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: Thank you. Ned, you saved my life. You planted the seed. The morning after the Aunt Gertrude hanging that morning, I had a huge hangover, and you had the opposite. You glowed with health and happiness. And, I mean, it just. The contrast of how I felt compared to how you looked was pretty noticeable. And, you know, I didn't get sober right away. It took another 10, nine years. You know, it's just like you planted that seed. And then when I finally decided to stop drinking, I remember. Oh, remember, Ned, it's possible. You can still be cool. You can still be fun. You can still be the life of the party.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: Vis a vis what you were talking about when, you know, when everybody, you know. And I stayed up till the bitter end with everybody playing the music, and then I'd go to sleep, and when I woke up, I. You know, I remember when you were there, I had just run 15 miles on the beach, and I came back, and there everybody is, still hungover and trying to drink coffee, and I just felt like a million bucks. So, yeah, there is a.
[00:44:49] Speaker B: There.
[00:44:49] Speaker A: There are benefits to sobriety that are undervalued.
And I think one of them is you have an opportunity to improve your life dramatically. And I haven't even talked about my training career because the marathon got me into becoming a personal trainer to make some extra cash.
And I went to mansions and met some of the, you know, the first billionaire in California. His name was Henry Salvatore, and he invented the thing that made ocean drilling for oil. Drilling for oil in the ocean.
He invented the thing you needed to do that.
And, Henry, I was working at a gym, and it was a $500 a week gym. It was very exclusive and this and that. And, And Henry was at 92, came to the gym, and he took a turn with each one of the trainers, and then he went to the owner and he said, I only want that guy Ned to work with. So I became Henry Salvatore's personal trainer, and we had the. I had so much fun with him.
You know, I know I'm giving you too much information, but this is kind of a cool story that I will tell you.
Tmi. But Henry and I became really good friends. And one of the reasons was because I didn't give him the pep talk about exercise. I had him talk to me, and we had conversations about things that he was interested in, namely politics, because he was on Reagan's kitchen cabinet.
So one day I said to him, well, Henry, you know all those guys, you've been in the Republican Party forever.
Of all those guys from Eisenhower all the way through, who was the smartest of all those guys? And he didn't even blink. He just said, well, none of them were really that smart.
And I was like, oh, my God.
And so then I said, well, what about Reagan? Like, did, did, did he come to you or did you go to him? Well, how did that work? And he goes, oh, Reagan. He had no idea. He, he, he. So Henry says, we followed Reagan and saw that he was doing speeches for GE and that he had an effect on crowds.
He was very good with a crowd. And so we went to him and we said, we're going to make you the Governor of California. You'll serve two terms as governor, and then we're going to make you the President of the United States, and you'll serve two terms as President of the United States. And that's exactly what happened.
[00:48:01] Speaker B: Wow, that's amazing. It shows you who's the real power behind the power. Right?
[00:48:07] Speaker A: Exactly. And that was the lesson.
Henry just taught me, lesson after lesson about that.
And he was really.
I liked him a lot. He was really good guy. He was very conservative, naturally. He was a Republican. Naturally. But you know what? He was super smart and very concise.
When he said something, you didn't have to wait. He's the opposite of me.
You know, he just, he put it on, put it out there, and it was truth. And so I, I, that was my day job, and I really only did it, you know, the gym was a, Was a lot. I was there all day for, for, you know, all day and into the evening for about. I think I did it for maybe somewhere between a Year and two years.
And it was just enough time to where I met enough people who said, you know what? I don't like having to come to the gym. Would you consider coming to my home? And so then I was invited to the home, into the home of these fabulous mansions and stuff like that, and with really interesting people. And to this day, I'm still very good friends with a guy that I trained for like freaking 15 years and twice a week like clockwork.
And he just sent me a letter the other day and he was the one who set me up to be on the board of the environmental group that you asked about earlier.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: Blue Dots Approach.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: Yeah, Blue Dot Living is their magazine. It's called the. I think it's called the Blue Dot Foundation. My friend that I trained for all that time said to me, hey, I've got somebody I think you'd like.
And she lives on Martha's Vineyard, and that's where. And Gogo also has a place up there. And we would go twice a year to go see Gogo.
[00:50:16] Speaker B: Can you explain who Gogo is? Because, I mean, I know who Go Go is, but other people might not.
[00:50:21] Speaker A: Okay, yes, I will tell you about Gogo. Gogo Ferguson, she's of the Carnegie family. The lineage in her group is Andrew had a brother named Thomas and they were partners in the business.
Thomas died early on, but he was a partner in the business. So the money kept flowing generationally. So there was generational wealth in the family. And they owned property on Cumberland island, like beautiful, beautiful places. And then somebody tried to come and do a development.
And those families, the Rockefellers, the Carnegies and the Candler family, who owned Coca Cola, were the big landholders. Now you have to know that Cumberland island is about the size of Manhattan Island.
Only 40 people live there.
So think of that. And it's four different ecosystems. There's like forest and swamp and beach and one other.
But how I met Gogo was a typical Ned story.
So there was a guy I was training who was a friend, but he was kind of out of shape and he asked if I would be his personal trainer and I said, okay. He was in the music business too, so I knew him through that G Mark Roswell, his name is, who's still a good friend. But he. Well, I was going to train him one day and I called and said, hey, I'll pick you up or I'll be out by your place in a couple hours and we'll go for a run. And he said, oh, gosh, I really want to, but I can't. I've got two friends here that are kind of on their honeymoon.
And I said, well, why don't you just ask them if they want to take a run with us? And he did. And they did. And that was my first meeting with Gogo. And we went for a run and then they asked me to stay and have dinner. So I stayed and had dinner. And during that time they told me he was a pilot, as you well know. And they were dropping down in places where they had friends and visiting. This is on their honeymoon tour.
And they stopped. And by the way, G Mark was an ex boyfriend of Gogo's and so she wanted to stop and say hello and she did. And we went for the run and had dinner. And during the dinner we were talking about their wedding and all of that and I said, oh, wow, that's so nice. You know, I just wrote a song called the Wedding Song and it was for a couple that belonged to the big country Club in LA.
And we had the wedding on the 18th green. They rolled out a piano and I played and sang the wedding song.
And the band that was there playing for the wedding all came over to me and said, wow, what's that song? That was great. I said, well, I just wrote it for these guys for their wedding.
So I told Gogo and I sang it for her.
And she went, oh my God, you have to.
Do you have a recording of that? I said, well, I just made a demo of it.
She said, oh, you have to send it to me. And I said, okay. Well, here's another Ned story. It took about two and a half months before I remembered, oh wow, that nice lady, I. She asked me to send the demo. So I did.
And about a week later I got a beautiful picture book of Cumberland island and a three page handwritten letter not inviting me, but demanding that I come for a three day weekend like you did. And so that's how I got my introduction there. And of course, the first day I was there, they wanted some music. And I'm a music guy, so I started playing and I became like the guy on Cumberland. I was like, they were calling me the Bard of Cumberland island, which yielded so much for me.
I've met so many people, including you over the years on Cumberland. And combine that with all the people I met in my times in New York and New Orleans and Los Angeles making music and then all over the world. I was in Africa on a safari.
My mom and dad were great world travelers. They loved to go places and exotic places and they had booked a trip to Tanzania, and my mom died before they were able to make the trip.
And they had been there before, but they loved Tanzania. It's an amazing place.
And anyway, my dad took me and one of my sisters and we went to Africa. So the guy who was the guide was a great guy, and aside from doing all the safari stuff, he drove us way up into the hills and to go to a place that was like an African village. It was really super cool, way up in the mountains. As a matter of fact, I took a run up there, like, in the. You know, it was an amazing run. And so I get back now. So we had some food, and then we decided we were going to leave. Well, the gas station had no gas.
The guy, the driver said, it's mostly downhill, so I think we can just, you know, ride downhill with, you know. Well, of course, we were doing fine. We were doing fine. And then there was the place where we came to where there was a hill. And when we started to go up that hill, the car didn't go anymore. And so there we were, we were stuck in the middle of Tanzania, in the middle of nowhere.
And so. And I had a little travel guitar in the back of the jeep. And all of a sudden, a group of very large natives came up, and they were kind of looking us over and kind of giving us a little bit of the hairy eyeball.
And I don't know why, but I just thought, you know, I'm just going to play a little music. So I took my guitar and I started singing a song, and it had a rhythm to it. It was a very. It kind of had a kind of country reggae ish feel.
So I start playing it, and now more and more people started to come up the little hill there to see. And before I know it, there's a whole group of Tanzanians dancing, dancing to the song and having a great time. And we were all having a great time, and I just kept it going and going, and it was cool. And then after that, one of the guys said, oh, you know, you're out of gas. And they walked three miles and filled a gas can, brought it back, filled us up, and off we went.
That is the power of music.
[00:58:11] Speaker B: Is that your definition of success? You said that you've been around successful people, but you don't measure it by wealth.
[00:58:20] Speaker A: I think I really believe that.
And I mean it in both ways, because I know a lot of wealthy people. Some of them are very happy and some of them are miserable. And I think you could probably Say that for people who are poor, some of them are happy and some of them are miserable.
So I don't believe that money is the only measure of success.
And I also feel that most of the people I know who are happy with money, they also use the money for positive things.
Like, you know, for instance, you know, philanthropy. And you know, the guy I was talking about who got me on the Blue Dot Institute, you know, he and his wife have built hospitals and, and you know, they've participated in, you know, they're on art museums, walls and stuff like that. And they're pretty happy.
You know, they're a pretty happy couple. And whenever I have, you know, time with them, it's nice. And so the people I know, as I say, with great wealth and I know a bunch and I get along with all of them and they know I'm not rich, but I am rich in my own way.
[00:59:48] Speaker B: Well, yeah, you get people dancing in the street.
[00:59:51] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:59:52] Speaker B: You survived the Mexican jail. Did you play music in the Mexican jail too, to get out of there?
[00:59:58] Speaker A: No, but I'll tell you how I got into the Mexican prison. I quit high school. My parents were just beyond. They couldn't. There was no way to handle me. I was out of control.
So my dad read an article in the New York Times about someone who took a freighter from Brooklyn to Cologne in Panama and then took the train across to the Panama Canal, you know, the Panama City.
So he gave me a one way freighter ticket from Brooklyn to cologne and $250.
[01:00:37] Speaker B: How old were you then?
[01:00:39] Speaker A: 17. 18.
[01:00:41] Speaker B: Really?
[01:00:42] Speaker A: 17?
[01:00:42] Speaker B: I can't imagine parents today doing that. Like 6.
[01:00:47] Speaker A: Oh, you could not do that. You could not. So I get off, I'm on this freighter and there's 12 passengers, maybe not even, maybe 10. The ones I remember, there were two little old ladies. One was going to visit her son who worked for National Geographic or something and was working in the Darien Jungle. And the other was her friend. And then there were two older men and the two older ladies came to me and said, stay away from those two guys. And I had a little stash, so I used to go up on the top all by myself and smoke weed and be in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight and the sky was full of beautiful stars. Anyway, I got to Kelowna and then I took the train over and the two little old ladies hooked me up with. She hooked me up with her son and he took me into the Darien Jungle in a boat. And it was amazing, just incredible. And then they took me to an army base that was down there on the Panano Panama Canal.
And I, and I had, you know, met people there and then I just stuck up my thumb and I hitchhiked from Panama City to all the way up to Mexico.
And I had adventures. I could, I could fill. We could do this four more times. Every place we had Costa Rica and Panama were having a, a little war.
And so there were. I saw jeeps, you know, firing at each other from a half block away and people ducked in the hallways and then they're firing and then they were gone and everybody went back about their business. I met some Australian guys that were insane and they had guns and they, we, we, we were driving along and they, they drove us into crazy places and they would take out the guns and fire, fire them and stuff like that. That was back when you could do that.
Yeah, this is a long time ago. And then.
Oh my God. I had, I had people.
I was hit. I was hitchhiking. Well, you can't do that anymore. But when I was hitchhiking, you could go a half hour without seeing a car.
And sometimes one of the buses would come by and they'd see me hitchhiking and they'd just say, get in.
And then sometimes people would pick me up and say, where are you going? And I'd say, I don't know, I'm just going. And they'd say, okay, well, why don't you come and stay the night with us all in broken Spanish.
And I would go and they'd feed me. And then the next morning I'd go out and put my thumb out again and hitchhike.
So that trip was supposed to last for two and a half weeks.
That was what the New York Times said.
It's a two and a half week trip.
Nine months later I was deported from.
Deported from the prison that would later hold El Chapo. And it was a brand new prison. And the only reason I got out of it was because there was guys smoking, smoking grass in the prison and there was a guard. And I looked and I went, oh my God. And then I thought, I'm in prison. What can they do with me? They put me in prison. I'm already here. And so we smoked the pot and I got so cottonmouth that there was a spigot. And it was such a brand new modern facility. And there was a spigot with water and I pulled it on full blast and I put my head under the spigot and I drank till my belly was full. And Two hours later, I had amoebic dysentery that made me lose. In eight days, I lost about £25.
And they were looking at me like, oh, we've got this gringo. They'd already put me through Interpol. They took pictures of me and fingerprints and all that kind of stuff.
But I think they were afraid we have this teenage gringo and he's going to die. And so they. At midnight on the eighth night, they. And I was on the. In the bathroom most of the time anyway. They wound up taking me and out to the airport and put me on a plane and flew me to Houston, Texas.
And I had had about 300 bucks in my pocket. This is after nine months living like a king, because I was taking weed from Michoacan to San Miguel de Allende and giving, you know, selling it to the artists there.
[01:05:46] Speaker B: Oh, that's how you got in trouble in the first place.
[01:05:48] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. I got busted once and they. The cop took a little bribe. But the second time, it was a big deal. There was like 100 pounds of pot that got me in trouble.
I was really just brokering it. But two guys from San Francisco, etc. But that adventure was priceless. You can't pay for that.
[01:06:10] Speaker B: And your parents, though, did. They must have been freaking out.
[01:06:14] Speaker A: They freaked out. And I'll tell you one last little detail on one of my hitchhiking things.
I've got my thumb out and it's. I don't know if you're. Did you ever see north by Northwest, the Hitchcock movie? Where. Well, he's at a crossroads and there's nothing. And he's standing there and then a plane comes down and, like, you know, trying to kill him. In this scenario, I am at this crossroads and on the other side of the street, there's a straggly looking gringo kid, brown hair, long hair.
And he comes over to me and he said, hey.
And there were no cars. He said, hey, can we hitchhike together? Because, you know. And I said, yeah, sure. So finally we get a ride and we went to Mishwa Connect. And then he said, listen, my parents have a home in Cuernavaca. Talking about privilege, that's a very privileged city. We get there and his father is the American consulate.
And so when we got there, the maids all came out and they took our clothes and washed them and they brought us food. You asked about my parents. They have no idea. I had stopped writing letters after about the first month or two, maybe two months in.
Right. I just had stopped Writing letters. I was in my own little world.
Anyway, he says, my aunt has a place down in Pied La Cuesta, which is right next to Acapulco.
And we hitchhike down there and we get there and it's like the most posh.
Like it's to the side of Acapulco and it's on the cliff. There's all these cliffs and everything, but it's like a five star hotel.
And there are all these little bungalows. And so we're in one of these bungalows up top and my friend says to me, hey, let's go down and.
Because they had their own little cove. And he said, let's go down and swim. So we went down. We're getting ready to jump in the ocean. And a friend of my mother's and a friend of my mother and father's are staying at this fancy hotel.
And she looks at me and sees me and she goes, she comes over and she grabs me by the ear, you know, she grabs me by the ear and pulls me and drags me up to her there cabana and says, we're calling your mother right now. She's been worried to death and da, da, da, da, da, da. And so we call that put my mom, you know, she was. That helped her to, you know. But this is before the Mexican prison. And I still, you know, I, I called and to let him know I was okay. But then I was off again to do stuff and. Yeah, no, my adventure down there was priceless. I could write so many stories about it. I'm just starting to write, do a creative course, creative writing course. And I'm putting stuff on paper and it's like fiction, but it's not.
[01:09:25] Speaker B: You don't need to make stuff up with a life like you've had. I'm curious to know, you said you've known people who've died because of money and privilege. Can you talk about that?
[01:09:33] Speaker A: Certainly.
And it mostly had to do with drugs and alcohol and money because there was no limit.
If you have like, you know, generational wealth or big wealth, you can afford to do whatever you want to do.
And if you're someone who's an addict or an alcoholic, that's dangerous.
And also the irony of that is you think you're doing drugs and alcohol to make you happy, but the truth is they don't. After a while, they not only don't make you happy, but they can cause depression.
When you're not drinking or using, all of a sudden you're really depressed because I saw that up close and personal. We were invited to sail on a yacht out of the Virgin Islands. My songwriting partner and me were invited by the guy who was the bass player from the Eleven Spoonful. He had a long. He had like a 96 foot sloop yacht. He invited us to come down there. And there was a guy who was on that trip, really, really nice guy, really fun guy, neat guy.
And we had such a good time with them. And I think about a month later we got a call. He died of an overdose or, you know, drunken stupor, whatever, you know, he, he. He died.
So that. And I've seen that over and over again. Oh, man, so many people.
[01:11:19] Speaker B: Do you think it's not just the, the supply, the ability to have, you know, unlimited supply, or is there something more than that?
[01:11:28] Speaker A: I think it's a combination of unlimited supply plus the hole in your soul that money can't fix.
[01:11:38] Speaker B: Wow, that sounds like a song right there.
[01:11:40] Speaker A: Right?
But you know what I'm saying, You know, if you're.
No amount of money can fix certain problems or certain things that happen. You know, one of the things, the great lessons that you learn in sobriety is be grateful, stupid. Don't complain. You're alive, you're able to function.
You know, maybe things aren't always perfect or maybe there's things that could be better.
[01:12:12] Speaker B: Well, I wanted to end this on one thing that you said. It's about what you give that allows you to receive.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
[01:12:21] Speaker A: I would love to, because it's one of my favorite subjects. I do a lot of volunteer work. I work with kids of all ages, from third grade to seniors in high school.
And we work on all different kinds of writing projects. You name it, and we do something with it. All different kinds of writing. And also with the high school kids, I help them write papers that will help them get scholarship money so that they can afford to go to school. They're all kind of underprivileged, underserved kids. I get so much more out of it than I give. When I figured that out, I realized that when you give, it comes back at you in incredibly beautiful ways.
And so, yes, I think I believe in that. And I believe I certainly in my life, the more I give, which has now become sort of part of who I am.
And it's not just for the school. You know, whenever I, you know, whenever I can, the result is always that I feel better about myself and I've helped someone else.
[01:13:37] Speaker B: Hey, I wonder if this is why You're a survivor.
[01:13:41] Speaker A: Probably.
Who knows? I mean, I will say, at the end of the day, I know nothing.
And the more nothing I know, the more free I feel.
[01:13:55] Speaker B: Well, Ned, it's such a joy chatting with you. I could do this for hours. It's the stories and the energy. And you've been such a mentor to me, too. I mean, you've been so supportive over the years. And I want to thank you so much for being a good friend, for being here and for sharing your stories with my audience.
[01:14:15] Speaker A: Well, I want to thank you because you are like a shining light in my life and your family and Bobby and I adore you and have had beautiful times with you both in Newport and in Staad. And, you know, I'm so happy we could do this. I can't say enough about you. And I'm grateful that you took the time to do this with me.
[01:14:41] Speaker B: Well, I'm going to put in this phone note all the research that we didn't get to because you've done so much. People will can look at the show notes and look at all your accolades.
[01:14:52] Speaker A: Well, it's nice.
I've had a charmed life and I'm grateful for that.
[01:14:58] Speaker B: All right, well, keep taking care of yourself, Ned. The world needs you.
[01:15:03] Speaker A: And you too, my dear. Keep up the good work and give my love to your family.
[01:15:11] Speaker B: If this episode landed for you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss what's coming. But here's the real thing. I want you to know if you're carrying something you can't talk about, if you have every resource except someone who actually understands what wealth costs. I work one on one with people like you navigating exactly that. You can reach me at Diana O E H R L I dot com. Thanks for listening.
