Ruthless (7 page)

Our weekends were fairly routine. We cleaned the house and went to town. The markets in East Grinstead held auctions of such things as cuts of meat, and it was fascinating to see people bidding for a leg of lamb. “I bid 15 shillings.” “Sixteen shillings.” “Seventeen.”

Around Christmas we took a trip out to Eastbourne on the English Channel. We went to a restaurant with an enclosed porch and windows all around. We sat there and had tea and scones with double cream and jam. It was enjoyable for everyone in the family. We watched the waves churning up against the cliffs and felt the pleasure of each other's company.

When I wasn't working on my progress in Scientology, I wanted to get something going with my music. I was playing trumpet at the Dorset Arms Hotel in East Grinstead on Friday and Saturday nights. I had put together a band, and we played jazz standards, some Dixieland and popular hits, and we packed the place on both nights every week. The crowd was a mixture of townspeople and Scientologists. They loved us. The band had a positive effect on the relationship between St. Hill and the town because things were generally not good between Scientologists and the locals. For a small town (the population was maybe 20,000 at the time, at a guess), East Grinstead was home to a great diversity and large number of church denominations and other religious organizations. Mainstream Christianity had a strong presence, and it doesn't take a lot to imagine how conservative groups must have viewed Hubbard and the Scientologists' unconventional and secretive ways.

Still, I would be walking through town shopping, and random people would stop me to say, “Ron, how ya doing?”

I was known as Ron Savage. I figured that Miscavige would be too hard for people to remember. At one point the town held a contest to select a band to go to East Grinstead's sister city in France,
Bourg-de
-Péage
. My band entered, and lo and behold, we won! Here we were, a band made up of Scientologists, and we would be representing East Grinstead in France. The
East Grinstead Courier
had this headline on its back page: “We Were Trying to Get Rid of Them, Now They're Representing Us.”

We went to France for a week and had a fantastic time. People in town asked us for autographs; for that week we were celebrities. The East Grinstead Town Council was proud because the crowd loved our performances. We were invited by the
Bourg-de
-Péague
town treasurer (which is a more powerful position than mayor because the treasurer holds the purse strings) to his home for a sumptuous meal. What a house! Marble floors and everything. We stuffed ourselves from noon until 4:00 p.m. and collapsed into easy chairs. Then he served us Pernod with water; even his kids were drinking it.

When we went back to England, the gigs at the hotel continued and so did the band's positive effect on relations between the town and Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard even went so far as to commend us for the good work we were doing, not that that was our main purpose. We just wanted to play music and earn some money.

At the time, Hubbard was living aboard a cattle steamer that had been converted into a yacht and renamed
Apollo;
he was sailing around the Mediterranean and North Africa, continuing his writing and research while conveniently staying away from government agencies that might have wanted a word with him. Most Scientologists were unaware that he was trying to avoid legal troubles. To us, he was simply the founder of Scientology and a man who was doing immense good for the world. We all held him in the highest regard, even though most Scientologists, including me, had never met him.

After we received that commendation, I wrote to him on the
Apollo
and said that we needed some help with instruments. Our piano player just played whatever piano we found at the venue. Our bass player needed a speaker for his bass. LRH wrote back and said that we were to be given whatever we needed.

By the summer of 1973, though, my money was pretty well used up, and the family had to move back to the United States. We had all made a lot of progress in Scientology, but we needed me to go back to work. There was no great sense of disappointment; that's just the way things were. Upon our return in September, we lived in Levittown, Pennsylvania, and the kids went back to school. I went back to selling cookware and still played some music. I always did well at the cookware gig. My first year selling full time, 1959, I was the fifth most productive salesperson out of 3,000 in the country. Like music, selling was something I just took to.

The kids readapted easily. They all still did well in school. Ronnie was in high school now, and David and Denise were in junior high. Denise ran for the track team and did great; she was a really fast runner. Ronnie was on the gymnastics team. David did not participate in any sports until he got to high school, and then he wrestled. His asthma was never an issue at that time. I never heard that he was bullied, even though he was still small, and he was no longer coming home and complaining about some kid at school.

There was one issue, however: a lot of kids in school were now using drugs, smoking pot, which became a problem.

One day I came home and found Ronnie sitting on a couch looking glum.

“What's up, Ronnie?” I asked.

“Nothing, Dad.”

“Whaddya mean
nothing?
” I could see it all over his face that something was going on. “C'mon, what is it?”

“There is a kid at school who was selling drugs and I told him, ‘If I ever catch you selling drugs to my sisters or my brother, I'm going to beat the shit out of you,' and he said, ‘Well, if you beat me up, I'll have you killed.'”

I was floored. People could say and do a lot to me, but if anyone came after my family, there was no limit to what I would do to protect them. I went upstairs and put on a pair of jeans, a
t-shirt
and an old jacket and grabbed a pair of leather gloves. “C'mon out to the car, Ronnie.”

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Just come out to the car. Where does the kid live?” I said as we began driving.

We found the house. “Is that it?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, come with me.”

“What are you going to do, Dad?” I was steamed, and Ronnie wasn't quite sure what was about to happen.

“Just come with me,” I said. We went up to the door. I rapped on it. The father opened it. “Get everybody down here,” I demanded.

His wife and two kids came down. I was pretty mad. “Listen, this kid here,” I said, motioning to one, “threatened to have my son killed.” I demanded an apology and let them know that it had better not happen again.

The kid apologized profusely and his father said, “This will never happen again.”

“Okay,” I said. And we left. Ronnie never had any trouble with that kid again.

Nine

England, Again

A few months later, in early 1974, I began getting calls from the band members who were still over in England. “You need to come back over,” they said. “We can do a demo and get a record deal.”

Finally, they convinced me and I agreed to return. I broke the news to the family, and Loretta was dead set against it. We had a major argument about that. She wanted Ronnie to go to California to finish high school and do gymnastics, and she wanted the others to be in school. All the kids were fine about going back to England because to them it was another adventure. Fueled by the possibility of realizing the dream of getting a recording contract, I at last persuaded the family to go with me, and we were soon headed back to England. The plan was that all the kids except Ronnie would go to school this time, while he did more Scientology courses at St. Hill. Meanwhile, I would get busy trying to secure a recording contract.

One of the guys in the band said he had a contact that could get us really cheap airfares. He told me to go to New York and arrange the flights with his contact. The guy told me I could get tickets for only 50 pounds, which in those days was $125. When I met him, he told me, “You actually aren't going to get a ticket. I'll meet you at the airport and give you boarding passes, so you can just walk onto the flight.” How he arranged that, I didn't know and didn't ask.

Our flight turned out to be a return charter to France. A tour had come to the United States, traveled around and was now flying home. Real nice airline. I was sitting in one row with David and Ronnie, and Loretta was a row in front with Lori and Denise. They were talking to a flight attendant, who said, “We'll be coming into France soon.”

Denise then piped up, “Oh, I've never been to France before.” Not something you want to say when you are supposed to be part of a tour returning to France.

Ronnie leaned over and implored, “Dad, somebody's got to stop her before she gets us sent back.”

Once we arrived, we took a train from Paris to Calais and then a ferry across the Channel to Dover. We had 26 pieces of luggage, and they were stuffed with Scientology books,
E-meters
, paraphernalia, you name it. This was in the days when the British government was not allowing Scientologists into the country. People would be turned away at customs and have to return home. In the late 1960s British Health Minister Kenneth Robinson banned foreign Scientologists from coming to Britain to study, based on his view that Scientology's practices were “a potential menace to the personality and
well-being
of those so deluded as to become its followers.” The ban was finally lifted in 1980, but during our times there it was not a minor concern.

I had a plan for getting us through customs, though. I went up to the immigration officer, threw down all our passports and exclaimed, “I am so glad to get away from those rude, goddamn French!” The truth is that everybody on the flight had been pleasant. Same with French customs. But I knew the stereotype and thought it might play in Dover. It did.

“I agree,” the officer said. “One year,” and he stamped our passports, allowing us to stay for a whole year. He could have stopped us dead. We had an East Grinstead address as our final destination.

Our next stop was customs. If they opened our suitcases, they would see Scientology books and
E-meters
and we'd be dead in the water. I had a plan here too.

“Okay, kids,” I said, “open up every piece of luggage. He's going to check every piece of our stuff.” The kids started opening up their suitcases.

“No, no, no, wait a minute,” the official said. “You're okay. Go on through.”

I called his bluff. He was sitting there with four aces. I didn't have even a pair. It was a gambit that I had used successfully once before.

In 1971, on my first trip to England, I was reading Hubbard's book
Scientology 8–80
on the plane. I also had my horn with me. At immigration I put down the address in East Grinstead. The immigration officer looked at the address and asked inquiringly, “You aren't one of those Scientology chaps, are you?”

I exploded, “A scientist? Whaddya mean? I'm not a goddamned scientist. I came over here to blow my horn and have a good time on vacation!”

“Okay, okay, sir,” he said as he waved me through. The whole time I had the
Scientology 8–80
book in my hand, gesticulating emphatically, and he never noticed. I didn't realize I'd been holding it until I looked down. I immediately stuffed it into the pocket of my overcoat.

During this second stay, David was a good student in school and got along with others so long as they left him alone. Because he was small, he sometimes got bullied. He wouldn't take it and punched out any kid who picked on him. Around St. Hill, though, he got along with everyone. After school and on weekends, he did extra training to obtain professional certification as an auditor.

In his book
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief,
Lawrence Wright claims that the family and I left David at St. Hill while we returned to the United States. This never occurred. Ronnie did return to the States before we did. Otherwise, we arrived as a family and left as a family both times we went to England.

I realize that people are not going to accept some points in my story. It is like that anytime someone writes about Scientology. If there are mistakes in here, they are unintentional. I am trying to tell the story as it actually was, and I want it to be as evenhanded and as fair as possible. I am not writing this out of vindictiveness or hate but only to shed light on my son, his character as it transformed over the years, and his behavior today as the leader of Scientology.

After someone completes training to become an auditor, they do an internship to get practical experience before the organization will certify them as fully qualified. While on his internship, David produced a higher number of
well-done
auditing sessions than any of the other interns for three weeks in a row and was acknowledged for that with an award: an autographed photo of Hubbard that had been laminated to a wooden plaque.

For this trip we rented a house from Quentin McDougall, a longtime Scientologist and scion of the family known for McDougalls Flour, which was as much a household name in England as Pillsbury was in the United States. He took to us and we took to him. Quentin was in his thirties when we knew him, but he, David and Ronnie got along famously. They used to play a game in the driveway with tennis balls and a garbage can lid. Quentin would stand in front of a big wall by the garage, and Ronnie and David would try to hit him with tennis balls. Quentin used the lid to fend off their shots, but occasionally they would fake a throw a couple times and then nail him good. Then either Ronnie or David held the lid and was the target, and the others threw the balls at him. Quentin had never been part of a family that was kind of rowdy, and he really enjoyed it.

We borrowed money from him to pay for the studio time to record our demos. People borrowed from Quentin all the time. He was a mark for anybody needing money. When I paid him back, he told me it was the first time anyone had actually repaid a loan.

We made three demos and I began shopping them around London. I had a suit custom made for me so I looked the part: heather green
Eisenhower-style
jacket, white turtleneck sweater, bellbottoms and yellow Frye boots. This was the seventies, after all.

When I went to record companies, I had a certain way of behaving. I simply assumed the characteristics of someone who already was a successful recording artist, even though all I had with me were the three demos. I would walk into an office and say to the secretary, “Hey, how are you doing? By the way, what's your A&R guy's name? [A&R stands for artist and repertoire, the record company division that hires new talent.] Oh, right, Tim. Is Tim in? Give him a buzz and tell him Ron Savage is here with some of the latest stuff I've recorded. If he wants to listen to it, I can come up now and play it for him. Otherwise, I have other people to see.”

The usual response was “Okay, he'll see you right now.”

“Hi, Tim. How ya doing? Ron, Ron Savage, I'm sure you remember.”

That's how I got in front of people. I just acted like I was a recording artist. I smoked Havana cigars with the head of A&R at United Artists. I was on a
first-name
basis with the A&R people at Purple Records, Chappell Publishing, everybody. They all knew me. They assumed that I was a guy who had been around a while and had some new stuff to play. This is something else I learned in Scientology: you assume something to be so and it will come true, if you assume it thoroughly enough. I played the role to the hilt. I always talked to the guards at the gate. I always talked to the secretaries and they would tell me their problems. I must have pulled it off pretty well because a month and a half later, we had a contract to do an album.

One day I was arriving at Polydor Records and the guard said, “Ron, Ron Savage, don't go, stay here. Listen, Gordon Gray wants to talk to you. He's going to give you a deal.” (Gordon was the A&R head at Polydor.)

Then, into a phone: “Yes, sir, he's here. I'll send him right up.” Then, to me: “He'll see you now. Go right up.”

I walked in. Gordon said, “Wonderful stuff. We're going to give you a contract.” That was it.

Three days later Chappell Publishing called and said, “We understand you got a deal with Polydor. We're also going to take you on, so we're going to give you a contract.” And they gave me an advance. Two deals within days of each other.

We cut the album and Polydor listened to it. They loved it. Chappell Publishing sent a copy to the BBC. Trevor Timmer, my representative at Chappell, called me all excited. “Ron, Ron! Can you make it up here today? BBC wants to talk to you!”

You bet! I took the train to London. I was excited beyond belief. This was a dream come true. Not too many people arrive in England, cut an album and six weeks later have a recording deal and then a week after that get a call from the BBC. The significance of that in a musician's life is incalculable. Some people shop their albums all over London for 20 years and never get a deal. All this happened to me in the first two months.

Trevor and I went over to the BBC.

“Hi, I'm Bill Bebb, a producer here.”

“Hi, Bill. Nice to meet you,” I said, suppressing my excitement while keeping up my act.

Trevor Timmer was aghast. In the normal course of events, getting in to see a producer at the BBC was a small miracle.

Bill said, “I listened to your stuff. Absolutely great, man. Great production. I love it. I can put you on BBC for three months. I would love to do it now. The only thing is, we have to wait for two months to clear space in the schedule. But after that, how many guys do you have in the band? Ten guys? Good. You need an arranger? Okay, good. I will give you double the session fee because you're the leader, and I tell you what, I'll give you the money so you pay your guys and that will keep the Home Office off your back.” (The government did not like Americans coming over and doing gigs that Brits could do, so handling it this way meant I would be hiring local people, not taking jobs away from them.)

Bill played some of the album. “Man, I love this stuff!” The album was sort of
seventies-based
tunes that I guess you would call
easy-listening
jazz but slightly out of the box. They were unique and Bill loved it.

Still in my identity as a successful recording artist, I chimed in, “Great. Glad you like it. Well, we have to go now. Don't call me. We'll call you.”

Trevor nearly fainted on the spot. Bill just laughed because he was so used to people sucking up to him. He kept us there, shooting the breeze for another 45 minutes.

Things were looking really, really good. I couldn't wait to get home and tell everybody about what had happened. At the time I was doing little side gigs for £20 ($50) a pop and was running out of money. By playing on the BBC for three months, everybody in the country would know my name and I could easily make £200 ($500) for a show. The American equivalent at the time was
The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
If you appeared on his show, you had it made. The BBC was the same thing.

I sat the family down, and I was really excited to tell them the news. “I talked to the BBC today, and they want to put me on the air. But right now we have to wait until this quarter is up. They book shows by the quarter, and we are going to be on for three months next quarter on a regular basis. The British people are going to know me. The pubs are going to know me. This is the break we've been waiting for. If we can hang on for another two months, we will be playing on the BBC!”

Loretta was the first one to answer. “I wanna go
home,
” she whined.

I turned to the kids. “What about you guys?”

“We want to go home, Dad.”

Jesus Christ! I was speechless. I couldn't imagine this was happening. None of them would back me up on it. To be honest, I was devastated. I couldn't see myself sending them back to Philadelphia to fend for themselves. It was crushing for me. The BBC is not a
25-watt
underground station. They were going to pay for a
ten-member
band, they were going to pay for an arranger, they were going to give me a leader's fee, and they were going to give me the money to pay the band.

From Loretta's perspective (and perhaps the kids' as well), going home was an opportunity to have the stable family life she desired for so long. She had done an advanced auditing training course at St. Hill and wanted me to do the same. Her dream was for the family to open a Scientology mission back in New Jersey. We would have run the center as a family and been together most of the time. It would have been ideal for her. Needless to say, when I opted to concentrate on the music, she was not pleased and it became another point of friction. At that moment, however, I was too deflated to put up much of a fight. It was five against one. I had invested so much of my time and energy to make a breakthrough, and here it was knocking at my door. Nobody else in the family could see the potential or what it meant for our future.