Adam Reuveni, Denise Sommerville and Rick Cruzen all worked with Ron Miscavige for years. Each of them played in the band with Ron. Each of them, at one time, was Ron’s direct superior in the Music Department at Golden Era Productions. Each of them traveled with Ron around the world. In other words, they knew Ron intimately; the good, the bad and the ugly.

Their stories, actual anecdotes of events that occurred, depict the man and who he is, not who Ron likes to pretend to be.

Case in point: Adam describes how when Ron was playing with the band he was unfiltered and crass which made it very difficult and uncomfortable for all band players. One time the band had this terrific singer playing with them and behind her back, when she wasn’t in the room, Ron would refer to her with the “N” word and, despite being told to stop, Ron kept doing it and kept snickering because he thought it was so funny.

Ron would refer to her with the “N” word.

The other guys, the other musicians like the guitarist would say, “Hey man, cool it,” and Ron just kept doing it because making fun of people at someone else’s expense and trying to put them down, that’s where Ron got his kicks. Ron really kind of got a special pleasure out of putting others down in that way. Ron was like that with the band members, with the different performers and pretty much anyone he was working with.

Denise described that she is of Jewish descent and Ron would call her behind her back, “the Jew bitch.”

Ron would call her behind her back, “the Jew bitch.”

Rick said that Ron also had a thing about anybody that had a disability. Like if someone had muscular dystrophy or they were missing a leg or something like this, Rick said that Ron would always make some kind of comment about it to people he was with or make comical imitations of those with disabilities. Ron had a favorite little gag he used to do, he’d say he had the most brilliant idea in the world for a power plant. You get somebody who has spasmodic muscles, put them in the middle of a room and tie strings to all of their limbs and connect them all to generators, then they could power the house. Ron would just go into gales of laughter. Ron thought that was just great as a joke. Ron got great pleasure out of demeaning others.

 

Denise went onto explain a time the band was in Frankfurt, Germany. They were performing at the Frankfurt Book Fair, for a dinner in a five-star hotel. She said that when they arrived to the five-star hotel, the first thing that Ron did was sit down at the piano in the room, where there were a bunch of Germans and start singing “Springtime for Hitler in Germany.” Denise described how the band had to literally dive on Ron and get him to stop. But that was what was funny to Ron and one time he even dressed up like Hitler.

Ron got great pleasure out of demeaning others.

Adam said he and other band mates told Ron over and over “Hey, Ron, this isn’t cool,” at which point it would become an instant attack against the person who was trying to get Ron on the straight and narrow. He didn’t want to be on the straight and narrow.

Another example Rick had was from the late ’80s when the band went to do a concert in Paris. Their first morning there, after they stayed overnight, and when they woke up to go to rehearse, Ron was having a tirade, screaming at the hotel staff for ripping off one of his shoes. Ron was sure that they’d taken one of his shoes and he was just red, beet-red and screaming and, you know, beside himself. So the band was delayed in going to rehearsal and they finally calmed him down and looked around and found his shoe under the bed or in the closet or someplace where he had put it. Ron did not, but the band apologized to the hotel staff and got him out of there and to rehearsal.

But the point was that Ron always had a complaint and he was always absolutely positive it was the other guy. That’s Ron.