Rude Boy Dead Man

When media reports suggested that Richie Restivo, a 19-year-old Rockhurst High School grad and leader of local ska band the Uprights, had been killed in Rockhurst’s parking lot February 6 in a rumble with another music group, I had my doubts.

In my previous position as Pitch music editor, I covered countless Club Wars bouts, local rap feuds and even a couple of musical showdowns that involved Restivo himself. But I’d never seen these figurative battles actually turn violent. And soon enough, word spread that Restivo’s band affiliation had nothing to do with his death.

Other news accounts have noted the tension between the Jesuit, upscale, all-male Rockhurst and nearby Center High School, a more typical urban public school. For me, that suggestion, that Restivo’s knifing death might have had something to do with the school he attended, had more resonance.

A graduate of “Jockhurst” myself, I’d witnessed firsthand the aggressive, clenched-fist culture for which the school was known. At the time, it tended to separate students into testosterone-fueled sadists and their terrorized prey.

But faculty at the school, backed up by current students, tell me the climate at Rockhurst has changed in the decade since I graduated. And though former students from both Rockhurst and Center were involved in the clash February 6, witnesses at the scene tell me the rivalry between the schools had nothing to do with what drew the musician to Rockhurst’s parking lot.

Instead, Restivo’s friends say the disagreement that ended in his death arose over accusations by a Bishop Miege High School student who suspected that his girlfriend had received drugs from a close friend of Restivo’s. Restivo’s friend denied it. But recriminations flew between the two young men, and soon the squabble had spread until it involved mere acquaintances who had little reason to get involved.

On the night of Restivo’s death, the boyfriend who had alleged wrongdoing wasn’t even present. In his stead, a group of ten to twelve people, some of whom the boyfriend barely knew, sources say, had gathered in Rockhurst’s parking lot to wait for Restivo and his friends.

Between 9 and 9:30 p.m., Restivo and two other boys arrived at the parking lot in three different cars, each following the other in a caravan. (Restivo’s two companions asked to remain unidentified for this story.)

When they pulled in, they could see the large group waiting for them in the back of a pickup truck. As they’d been warned, the group was armed.

Rather than turn around and drive off, however, the three parked. Restivo emerged from his white Chevrolet holding a baseball bat.

Still, his friends say, the singer approached the large group of rivals as if he intended to talk his way through the situation.

Restivo was so confident that he would defuse things with his charm and reason, his friends say, he’d even planned to catch a movie later that night.

Instead, Restivo found himself fending off the attack of a bat-wielding foe. And as Restivo tried to defend himself, another combatant came up from the side or behind and plunged a blade into his throat.

Restivo’s friends rushed him to a hospital, but he was dead within an hour of the stabbing.

Kansas City homicide detectives ended their investigation on February 27, handing over the case file to Jackson County prosecutors, who will decide as early as this week whether to file charges.

Several days after Restivo’s death, more than 2,000 people showed up at his wake — a stunning number considering his young age but less surprising, perhaps, to anyone familiar with the remarkable “rude boy” frontman, a talented musician and constant proselytizer for a worldview that seemed almost impossibly positive.

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I’d heard similar accolades recited about Restivo for years, but that still didn’t answer the question that wouldn’t leave my mind.

Why was Restivo in that parking lot at all?

I set out to talk to Restivo’s friends and family, but I wasn’t really prepared for what I found: People who knew Restivo spoke of him in striking superlatives.

“It might seem like people are exaggerating, but everything you’ll hear about him is true,” says Restivo’s friend Conor Loftus. “Richie himself was an exaggeration of life.”

Jakob Kruger, for example, first met Restivo while he was preparing to kick some ass.

Kruger had been knocked around by a mosh pit that had broken out at Rockhurst’s 2000 Battle of the Bands, and he’d had enough. Flushed with rage, Kruger balled his hands into fists and was about to start swinging when a slender, short-haired student in a gas-station-attendant’s jacket intervened. “It’s not worth it,” Restivo said. He repeated it calmly but forcefully. “It’s not worth it.”

Restivo was also on hand another time Kruger fell victim to moshing. This time, however, the elbow that caught Kruger in the mouth, dislodging one of his front teeth, was Restivo’s own.

Kruger lost his incisor at Stand Against the Hand, one of Restivo’s benefit concerts for the battered women’s shelter Hope House. Apologizing profusely, Restivo grabbed a bucket and paraded Kruger and his bloody grin around the venue, soliciting donations for dental work.

“He raised a good amount of money,” Kruger says. “I remember seeing the bucket that night, but I haven’t a clue as to what happened to it. I’m sure it went to a good cause.”

Others testify about Restivo’s surprising generosity. When a show by his earlier band, the Sloppy Popsicles, earned $600 at El Torreon, where he was a constant presence both as performer and concertgoer, Restivo tried to refuse payment. He told the venue’s then-manager, Brian Saunders, to use the money to pay bills.

Restivo was a charismatic charmer, the type of person who would kiss girls on the cheek at first meeting and speak to new acquaintances as if they were longtime confidants. He was a devoted romantic, who, playfully donning the role of teacher, assigned his girlfriend, Claire Sunderland, to write a list of ten things she loved about herself and then graded it. And he was profoundly talkative regarding any topic, even those about which he knew little.

Sunderland recalls falling asleep on the phone with him on several occasions, only to wake and hear him still speaking. “He had so much useless information — it was wonderful,” she says.

He was also disarmingly respectful. Once, in Brookside, he spotted an elderly veteran in full regalia. Restivo approached him, shook his hand and told him sincerely, “Thank you. You’re a great man, and this country owes you.”

But likable as he was, Restivo was also chronically late, so much so that friends roll their eyes and speak of “Richie time.” He usually explained his constant delays by saying he’d been waylaid by an irresistible artistic impulse — a trumpet solo that couldn’t wait or a piano melody that needed to be committed to memory. Even at parties, Restivo couldn’t be lured away from guitars, keyboards and amps if they were available. He could play eight instruments well.

Restivo’s first band, the Sloppy Popsicles, sparked a rude awakening in this town. After dabbling in techno and punk, Restivo seized on ska in high school and made it his passion.

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One of his favorite songs was Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross” from the soundtrack of The Harder They Come. In that 1973 film, Cliff plays a poor Jamaican singer who becomes frustrated by the corrupt music industry, turns to dealing drugs, shoots a police officer and becomes a hero to his oppressed people. The movie remains essential ska cinema, depicting the dramatic differences between the original “rude boys” and their modern counterparts.

The rude boys of the 1960s were slick-dressed ghetto kids of Kingston, Jamaica, who often carried knives and had to fight for their lives.

“Richie studied the Jamaican roots, and he could relate to the rude boy,” says his older sister, Rebecca. “It was the music of the underdog.”

Immigrants brought that music and sense of style to England, leading to a late-1970s explosion of English ska that coincided with the punk movement there and spilled over into America’s underground scene. But by 1982, the ska phenomenon had dwindled here and abroad. In 1994, groups such as No Doubt and Goldfinger reintroduced it to American teens, and the occasional ska showcase suggested that there was still a young fanbase eager to dance and show off its secondhand threads.

Locally, a brother act called the Gadjits thrived in the mid-1990s, but as all-ages venues disappeared, local ska faltered.

“Ska in Kansas City was dead in 1998,” says Andy Woods, a friend of Restivo’s from Rockhurst. “Then, out of nowhere, Richie raised up his arms and said, ‘Let there be ska.’ The next show, 250 kids showed up.”

The considerable crowds were owed as much to Restivo’s powers of persuasion as to any acute interest in rapid-fire reggae riffs. The few national ska tours that limped to town still drew poorly, but Restivo could fill a venue on the strength of his enthusiastic invitations.

Restivo also recognized the importance of cultivating an impressionable young audience. At one show, Blue McNeil, a grade school student attending her first concert at El Torreon, wanted to buy a size-small Popsicles T-shirt. Restivo had none to offer, but he later located a suitable substitute, tracked down McNeil and gave her the merchandise for free.

Eventually, Restivo split amicably with most of his Sloppy Popsicles bandmates. He had become more interested in traditional ska sounds than in the group’s punk hybrid.

“He had a huge passion for ska, but the rest of us were into punk and didn’t know too much about the style, so he educated us,” former bandmate Ben Summers recalls. “To see a revival in that scene was one of his dreams come true. Even when our interest in ska faded, he never wavered in his love for Jamaican music.”

“He would have stayed ska until the end,” says Tanka Ray drummer Chas Snyder, who shared El Torreon bills with the Popsicles.

Restivo’s new outfit, the Uprights, slowed the pace and raised the degree of difficulty. Its rich, soulful songs were some of the best I heard from any local ska band.

And Restivo didn’t get discouraged when many of his friends and classmates left for college, leading to sparsely attended shows.

“The crowds went away, but they [the Uprights] just kept getting better,” Saunders says.

Restivo obsessively threw himself into the intricate work of arranging songs for a large ensemble like the Uprights. Much of that work took place at Rockhurst.

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In the Rockhurst music room, Restivo, who handled vocals only when he was onstage, would amuse his friends with improvised piano compositions. “He would look at us with this astonished look when he would go into a different part of the song, like he had just done a magic trick,” his friend Andrew Perry recalls.

And when Restivo would start playing piano and trumpet simultaneously, laughter would turn to awe.

Restivo, his friends recall, loved Rockhurst, and not just in the usual root-for-the-teams, go-to-the-dances way. He would often give short speeches touting the school. When Loftus, now a junior, considered transferring, Restivo convinced him to stay, emphasizing that junior year is when Rockhurst classmates become brothers.

I wondered if Restivo’s experiences were much like mine.

In 1992, my sophomore year, Rockhurst staged an American Gladiators-style skirmish as part of its Mission Week charity drive, known for human board games and other goofy events.

As some of the school’s football players slammed into one another without padding, testosterone boiled in the bleachers. Shoulders separated and blood dripped from smashed noses. It felt like Lord of the Flies as students forgot friendships and cheered for carnage. And though the event was never repeated, it left a lasting impression.

More telling, though, were the school’s pep rallies, at which “randomly” selected students, always among the most awkward and uncoordinated members of their classes, tried to complete difficult physical challenges. Invariably, they failed miserably in front of the entire student body, and for months — or longer, if their efforts were particularly embarrassing — students would remind them of their public humiliation. As a scrawny freshman, I lived in constant fear of being the next name picked for this Shirley Jackson-style lottery.

Such spectacles are no longer part of Rockhurst’s rallies, says Laurence Freeman, the school’s executive director of alumni affairs. In recent years, Freeman says, the school has emphasized a philosophy of cura personalis — “care for the individual.”

“When you isolate on one person in a way that is negative, that doesn’t help,” he says.

Rockhurst counselor Michael Heringer, one of the faculty members who patrols the sidelines during football games and dissuades students from starting derogatory chants about their opponents, characterizes Rockhurst as a “kinder, gentler place” than it was a decade ago.

“The tone of the building has changed because of the drama, music and art departments,” Heringer says. “Those are all acceptable things to do now. I’m amazed at the number of guys who write poetry and music. People might have been doing it before, but they never felt comfortable about it.”

Freeman wonders if Rockhurst was chosen as the site for the February 6 showdown as a matter of convenience.

“It’s a completely porous campus, with exits onto both State Line and Ward Parkway,” he says. “Our lights are up to code, but we don’t have 24-hour security or surveillance cameras. Do we need to take those steps? Maybe.”

But Freeman argues that it’s a mistake to think that Rockhurst itself had anything to do with Restivo’s death.

“To suggest that Rockhurst High School either encourages or teaches its students to advocate violent behavior is untrue,” Freeman says. “Young men work together, play together, study together, make good decisions together and, unfortunately, make bad decisions together. What happened was not the result of our general climate at Rockhurst. It was the result of people from many backgrounds making horrible judgments that led to heartbreaking ends.

“It’s a simple stereotype to say this is a testosterone-fueled environment,” Freeman continues. “Sometimes a particular group casts a big shadow, and Rockhurst always had the reputation of being a jock school. If someone is predisposed to think in any way against any organization, it is a long process to get them to feel differently.”

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Still, for Restivo’s punk-rock friends, Rockhurst wasn’t always a safe haven.

“Every day, I was harassed by somebody,” Woods recalls. “They would call me white trash, faggot, you name it. The teachers there are amazing, but with the students, it’s a close-minded environment. They would see something different and feel threatened by it.

“When the guys would give me shit, Richie would talk to people and try to get them to understand,” he continues. “He would say, ‘These are my friends. Yeah, they’re different, but they’re good people if you get to know them.'”

Loftus recalls that Restivo often defended the school to the friends of his who felt like outcasts. “He would talk about how much he loved Rockhurst, and he would encourage us to stay, be unique, do what we could, accept people and be nice to everyone,” Loftus says.

Restivo seemed to know no embarrassment, with the apparent exception of an early Sloppy Popsicles demo tape that friends often used to torment him. But when it came to making sure his friends’ younger brothers always felt like they belonged or attempting to teach uncooperative punks to salsa dance, he had little concern for what bystanders might say.

Restivo seemed fearless that way, as if the force of his personality could smooth over any situation, no matter how potentially humiliating or dangerous.

“They started calling us faggots and giving us a hard time,” says Woods, describing an encounter with Brookside bullies. “Richie went right up to the guys and said, ‘Hey, are you talking shit on my friends?’ He confronted them and called them on it, and we never had to deal with those guys again.” At the time, Restivo had known Woods for less than a day.

Restivo claimed to abhor violence. The two benefit shows for the Hope House shelter that he organized stemmed from his distaste for cruelty.

“The group of people I hang out with is against violence,” Restivo told the Pitch when he was promoting the first of those shows. “But a lot of people think that punk rockers, the majority of them, are violent and love to fight.”

But even if he never wanted to resort to his fists, Restivo was quick to confront. His friends say it was as if he were irresistibly drawn to clashes over his friends and always expected his alluring persona to win over whomever he faced.

In nearly every previous flare-up, his fiery conviction was enough to encourage antagonists to back down before actual fighting ensued.

At least once, it didn’t happen that way. But the Restivo family, Rebecca says, still applauds the way that Richie stood up for his friends.

“My parents are very proud,” she says. “What could a parent want more than a kid who would give of themselves completely and totally for someone else?”

That Restivo’s family seemed pleased that his sense of loyalty had outweighed his sense of preservation astounded me, but it went a long way to answering my questions about why Restivo had stared down his enemies.

In his position, most probably would have left their friends to fend for themselves against such odds. But such a thing never seemed to occur to a young man who had such confidence in his ability to change the world.

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At El Torreon on February 14, the Uprights played their most memorable show. It was, as Restivo had promised on his Web site weeks before his death, when the gig was just supposed to be a Valentine’s Day show, “a night of love and passionate music.”

Audience members moved as if mesmerized to impeccably crafted rhythms. They held each other tightly and laughed until tears welled in the corners of their eyes.

Adorned in suits and ties, the Uprights affixed pictures of Restivo to their stingy brims, hanging another porkpie hat on their late singer’s microphone stand. For once, the band’s classy appearance didn’t stand in marked contrast to the crowd. There were couples clad in formal splendor, fresh from romantic dinners, and parents in upscale attire. The fashionable punks went all out as well, making sure every hair-sprayed spike was absolutely aligned.

The group’s songs, mostly presented without vocals, were a testament to Restivo’s compositional skill.

With its perky pace, ska ranks among music’s more joyous genres, but although the Uprights’ guitars and keyboards struck cheerful chords, its horn melodies sounded uncharacteristically forlorn and mournful. It was a fitting soundtrack for a roomful of people whose animated conversations were occasionally interrupted by spells of sorrow.

At the midway point of the Uprights’ six-song set, the group paused for a slide show. As pictures of Restivo flashed past, from wide-eyed childhood shots to goofy, school-dance souvenirs, two of his own classical pieces played in the background, one of which was a traditional Italian arrangement. After the last image faded, Restivo’s longtime friend Steve Sichko grabbed the microphone. “Richie lived enough for a thousand lifetimes,” he announced. “He had a short life, but he’ll have a forever legacy.”

Three days earlier, a curious congregation of people had sat in the Church of Ascension to send off Richie Restivo. Stately men in suits and elegant women in dark dresses sat beside young men with jet-black mohawks and young women with pink dreadlocks. There were the Rockhurst men in their crisply creased khakis and the punks with tattoos crawling around their necks and snaking down their arms.

As Restivo’s coffin passed through the vestibule, several Rockhurst lettermen wept quietly. A few feet away, a young man wearing a studded black-leather jacket with “Circle Jerks” handwritten on the back hugged an inconsolable friend and stared hard as the procession passed.

But on Valentine’s night, the mood was less solemn. As they listened to the Uprights for the last time at El Torreon, hundreds of friends shared stories. It was a scene Restivo, who always tried to unite friends from seemingly incompatible social circles, would have loved had he witnessed it. In fact, several people described it as Restivo’s final gesture, his grand plan to reunite the high school pack and rekindle dormant relationships.

“I know that that is just what Richie would have wanted,” said Erin Coleman, a friend of Restivo’s who drove in from Lawrence for the concert. “During his life, Richie brought so many people together through his music and his captivating personality. It is only fitting that his death should bring us all even closer.”