A gangster at 14 and in maximum security prison by 17, he turned his experiences into warped rock that thrilled New York’s art scene. Fifty years on he recalls one of music’s strangest careers
In 1966, Armand Schaubroeck – an ex-con who had made a local name for himself selling guitars out of his mum’s basement in Rochester, New York – tracked down Andy Warhol with an idea: a rock opera about Schaubroeck’s experiences of the US prison system. “He said, ‘how’d you get my home number?’” Schaubroeck laughs. “I said I called up the Rundel library [in Rochester] and looked him up in the Who’s Who. He goes: ‘My phone number is in there?!’ But he was fascinated – he wanted me to come to New York immediately.”
Aged 17, Schaubroeck had been sentenced to three years at Elmira State Reformatory, a maximum security prison in New York. He had come from a difficult home: his father, a Belgian immigrant, was confined to a veteran’s hospital with severe post-war PTSD. With no father figure and scarce money, “it eventually led to crime”, he says. At 14, he became part of a gang – “we had rules: we never stole from kids, just places that were insured” – that was eventually busted for 32 burglaries and imprisoned in the harshest of environments. In Elmira as inmate #24145, Schaubroeck saw things – extreme violence, sexual assault, suicide, corruption, insanity, mental deterioration – that left a permanent imprint upon his release on parole after 18 months. “I didn’t come out screwed-up or nothing. But your feelings disappear. You leave with a little bit of coldness in you.”
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