Muddy's Mojo Hinge Pins - A Five Guns West™ Story

Grand piano lid hinge pin, yesterday

It must have been 1980 [avers Five Guns West® - Ed.]. I was wintering in front of Lita Ford’s place on the island of Navarre between Pensacola and Fort Walton Beach FLA. An English friend of mine, Billy Putnam, husband of punk model Wendy Tiger [below left - Ed.], and I went up to see Iggy at the Agora Ballroom in Atlanta, GA. He no-showed and instead it was the Swimming Pool Qs with local punkers The Wankers headlining. Some of The Wankers become new wave band the Producers [I've known a couple of producers who were wankers - FT3].

Out of sheer boredom I drove the 5½ hours back up to Atlanta the following week, riding the draft behind semi trucks and doing 85 mph on average. I got there late at night and checked into an old hotel, it’s still there but the name eludes me. The Moulin Rouge strip club is still on the 1^st floor. The hotel is over a hundred years old, in impeccable shape, claw foot tubs. Black bellboys in velvet monkeys suits, elevator operators.
 
Turned out the Johnny Van Zandt Band was opening and closing for Muddy Waters at the Agora that night. I’d been a Muddy fan since I was eight years old.
 
I got up early that morning and to my surprise it was snowing out. It’d been nearly 80 degrees the weekend before.  It may have been April. I couldn’t get in my car through the doors and really had to try like hell to open the hatchback and then kick the drivers door open from the inside only to decide I didn’t want to drive with ice all over everything.

I went and got a huge coffee [left - Ed.] and stood out in front of the Agora. Kids had camped out all night in front of the Fox Theatre to get into some show but I can’t remember who the act was. Needless to say there were a lot of hallucinatory delights to be found in the crowd.
 
The Agora had a long entry way, very deep, almost like a tunnel. I was standing up in there and there was a red light on the street in front of the place but no cross street. A pick up truck with some really sketchy dudes in it were, I thought, giving me some hard stares and I thought they were going to give me some trouble. The light changed and they left.
 
Ten minutes later or so they were back, pulled up on the sidewalk, got out and were walking towards me. I clutched my stiletto but when they asked if I worked for the Agora and could they bring Muddy’s band piano in that door I replied “No, you got to come in the back.”

We got to the back door and the Agora team thought I was with Muddy’s band and the piano guys thought I worked the Agora. We hauled the piano up onstage … a grand piano mind you … and the guys left. The Agora workers were plying me with Heineken and pizza [left - Ed.] for a couple of hours when the sound guy asked me to remove the piano lid. I silently freaked the fuck out but had carpentry skills and removed the hinge pins and put them in my leather jacket pocket ... where they still reside to this day. Not my fault.
 
Johnny Van Zandt came out to play and I went and hung with Muddy and the band. Muddy played and some of the kids from the Fox Theatre came to my table and hung out. Johnny Van Zandt band played again after Muddy. Having driven all night and being wrecked out of my skull I “fell asleep” at my table. Whoever I was sitting with had moved everything around in my pockets, as a joke I guess, but everything was still there. Van Zandt was gone when I was awoken by wait staff telling me I had to go. I protested that I had the hinge pins for the piano and they had to be reinserted … I didn’t even know where the lid to the thing was. The bouncer was there by this point …. I wasn’t making a scene, I never do, I’m a pretty quiet guy but he didn’t believe me and made me leave. So, I have what I consider a mojo from my favorite blues musician.


Thanks to FGW™ for this fragrant nosegay of reminiscence!