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.”
