In the adjoining kitchen [to the recording studio], bassist Ron Blair and drummer Stan Lynch teach me a new game -- "smash the toy helicopter." The object of the game is to throw potentially destructive matter at a small, battery-powered plastic helicopter which flies in a circle at the end of wire attached to a fixed base on the counter. I toss a huge roll of construction tape at the chopper, grazing its tail and smashing a cup behind it. My next toss knocks over Lynch's coffee.
"That's pretty good," Blair tells me. "You learn fast." Not fast enough to actually put the whirly-bird out of commission, though. Lynch had that honor. "As I recall," Petty would tell me three weeks after this initial visit to the studio, "Stan got so into it that he threw a hammer at the damn thing." So much for studio fun and games.
