Reagan Youth: the tragic life and death of Dave Rubinstein
The discourse of American hardcore punk rock is usually centred around Washington D.C., where groups like Minor Threat and Bad Brains pioneered this radical new offshoot of punk. However, if you were to look further afield, to the punk ground zero of New York City, you could find a vibrant scene of incredible hardcore groups. Among them was Reagan Youth.
Often performing with the likes of Bad Brains and Beastie Boys – who were, in their infancy, a hardcore punk rock outfit – Reagan Youth were one of the most radical and inventive groups to ever arise from the scene. The group, with Queens native Dave Rubinstein at the helm, were staunchly left-wing but would often use imagery connoting Nazism and the Ku Klux Klan.
Nazi imagery was commonplace within the early punk scene, arising from a desire to shock audiences, but it had largely died out by the 1980s. Reagan Youth certainly raised some eyebrows with the chorus of their self-titled track, seeing Rubinstein shout, “We are Reagan Youth! Heil! Heil! Heil! Reagan Youth! Sieg Heil!”. The irony, of course, was that Rubinstein was raised Jewish, the son of Holocaust survivors who had relocated to the USA. Their use of Nazi imagery was a reflection of the right-wing values inherent in America at the time, worsened by the damaging presidency of Ronald Reagan (hence the group’s name).
Reagan Youth were kings of the New York underground. They did not manage to record much material in the studio, with the bulk of their discography made up of lo-fi recordings made within the sweat-stained walls of the legendary CBGB club. For years, the group focused entirely on touring and perfecting their live show. The result of this was that, as their contemporaries like the Beastie Boys witnessed mainstream success and commercial acclaim, Reagan Youth were still living on other people’s sofas and struggling to make a name for themselves.
By the end of the 1980s, as Reagan’s reign of terror came to an end, the endless touring, drinking and drug-taking had taken its toll on the group, and so they made the decision to split. By this point, as had been the case for many New York punk icons, Rubinstein had developed a heavy reliance on heroin. Now, with no band to keep him busy and no way of raising funds, the lead singer turned to drug dealing. Someone clearly took umbrage to this, as Rubinstein was soon attacked with a baseball bat, to such an extent that the assault left him in a coma.
While unconscious in hospital, the Reagan Youth singer was subject to a lobotomy meant to relieve the brain trauma resulting from the baseball bat attack. Although this procedure may have temporarily saved his life, it did not last long. Moving back in with his parents, the singer continued to use drugs and began dating sex worker Tiffany Bresciani, who would fund the couple’s drug habit through prostitution. One night, Bresciani was picked up by a regular customer and was not seen alive again. Eventually, her decaying body was found in the back of a truck driven by serial killer Joel Rifkin.
Less than a week after Rubinstein’s partner had been brutally murdered, the punk star’s mother died after being accidentally run over by his father. Estranged from his friends in the punk scene and now having lost both his mother and girlfriend, Rubinstein felt as though he had nowhere left to turn. On July 3rd, days after the death of his mother, Rubinstein took his own life via a drug overdose. The death of Dave Rubinstein and the circumstances that led to it were nothing short of tragic. However, the life he had led within New York’s hardcore punk scene and the lasting legacy of his daring, uncompromising work with Reagan Youth remain something to be celebrated.
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