Armand Schaubroeck – Ratfucker

This was a big influence on me and how I chose to go about living my life. There are moments of cool, lyrical sublimity here unsurpassable even by the King of New York himself, ‘Personality? I don’t know anything about that, I never got that involved’ being my personal favourite. I actually went up to Rochester in upstate NY to pay my respects when I was on tour in the US. Armand showed me and the Fats around his famous music shop: The House Of Guitars. That was how he’d managed to get away with putting out songs like ‘Preteen Momma’, by going 100% independent, by placing himself above, below and beyond the miserly reach of public decency. Food for thought right there. We then went and sat in a bar and drank four or five Margaritas. He told me tales about him and Lou Reed. Once fully inebriated, I asked him how he’d done it. How did he actually write Ratfucker? He told me that in order to write Ratfucker, he actually had to become Ratfucker. There was no other way of going about it. It was painful. It involved disgrace aplenty. It involved possible and actual jail time. But by God, it worked.