"God, I hated that song," Alvin tells me when I ask him about the Nutty Squirrels debut single. "Not just hated it. It actually made me angry. Like, physically angry. When it came on the radio, I wanted to punch it. Or punch you and Simon." Why such a strong reaction? "Petty bullshit," says Alvin with a shrug. "Up until that point, it had always been Alvin, Simon, and Theodore - in that order. That song was Simon and Theodore, with no Alvin at all. And let's face it - your song may not have been art or anything, but it sure as hell was better than anything with the Chipmunks name on it. And I could've been a part of it. I was with you guys back when you were first working on that material. But you know, I was a teenager. I decided I'd rather hang out with my friends than write and rehearse with you. And while I was running around and goofing off, you two wrote and recorded a good hit single.

"The mature thing to do would've been to apologize to you two, and ask if I could join the group. Even if it was too late to get included in the Nutty Squirrels drawings," Alvin added with a smirk. "But of course I didn't do that. As I said, that would have been the mature thing to do. And we're talking about AL-VIN here. Teenage AL-VIN, no less. I don't think teenage AL-VIN ever did the mature thing."

I guess Simon and I were lucky, because Alvin didn't get openly hostile. He basically just shut us out. Despite us three sharing a bedroom, neither Simon nor I saw much of Alvin during the end of 1959 and the start of 1960. I'd see him at dinner, occasionally at school, and just as we got into bed. And of course, we were still doing Chipmunks recordings together on Sundays. But otherwise, he was hanging out with his friends, and not talking to us much at all if he could help it.

But as Alvin began pulling away, Simon and I were drawing closer together. Hanover wanted a follow-up single and full-length LP as soon we could deliver them. Every weekday, I'd come home from school, rush through my homework, and then head down to the basement. Simon would tell me what he had come up with during the day, and we'd see if we could turn his ideas into a song.

We eventually came up with a pretty ballad with a nice electric guitar line. Just like before, we worked out the melody by vocalizing wordlessly on top. Our original idea was to just have us humming the melody line. But we decided our humming would be hard to hear over the backing music, so we swapped it to "doo wah doo wah"-type vocalizations. The song ended with a few quietly-sung "uh huh"s, so we decided to name the song "Uh Huh".

"That was an error on our part," Simon states. "I am convinced that people glanced at the song title and misread it as 'Uh Oh', thus not realizing it was a separate and distinct piece. Had we given it a different moniker - even 'Doo Wah' - I am certain it would have performed better."

Simon bought some jazz records for us to listen to, hoping they would give us some inspiration for more Nutty Squirrels pieces. We were both drawn to the Dizzy Gillespie number "Salt Peanuts", so we decided to try writing an uptempo number in the same style. But after working on it for a couple of weeks, we weren't really getting anywhere. The few good parts that we came up with sounded a little too much like the original. Finally, I just said "Well, why don't we just do 'Salt Peanuts'?" And once we decided on that, everything fell into place. We'd been listening to it so much, we had the song pretty much committed to memory. We just had to sit down and pound it out.

From the very first note of our run-through, Simon and I just clicked. We spent the entire song staring at each other - me over my drum rolls, and Simon over his paws busily playing his guitar. Our smiles got bigger and bigger as we "sha ba doo"ed and "doo bee doo wah"ed our way through the Gillespie classic. We ended with a few repetitions of "salt peanuts, salt peanuts", until Simon yelled "yeah!" as I hit a cymbal with all my might. As the cymbal crash reverberated through the basement, Simon and I simply stared at each other. I don't know what was running through Simon's head, but I was simply enjoying the afterglow.

On rare occasions, when I play music, everything seems to really come together. I end up surpassing what I ever thought I could do. And when that happens to me, I like to just enjoy the feeling of "being musical". Looking back on that moment, staring at Simon as he rested his paws on his guitar, I can honestly say for the first time in my young life that I felt like I had "made it".

Up until that time, sure, I had performed music. I had played shows, and recorded songs. I had two number one songs and a top ten album under my belt. But I often felt like most of that had been sheer luck. That anybody could have warbled those lyrics, or hit those toms on "Almost Good" - I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I was proud of my work on "Uh-Oh", but even that had felt like a bit of a fluke. But that first run-through of "Salt Peanuts" felt different. I wasn't just doing things that anybody else could have done. Even though we didn't write that song, for those two minutes, we owned that song. We had created something. And in my eyes, we had created something great.

Theodore Chipmunk was a musician, goddammit.

My reverie was interrupted by the door at the top of the stairs opening.

"That was very nice, boys," Mrs. Gorman shouted down to us.

Simon and I dissolved into giggles. "Thank you, Mrs. Gorman," we yelled back up.

By that point, Elaine and I had been together-not-together for about two months. We remained casually friendly at school, and I don't think anybody suspected anything was going on. A couple of times a week, we'd meet up in the woods behind my neighborhood for cuddle sessions. If we had the time, I'd lay my head in her lap and we'd talk about everything and nothing. She'd complain about how the other girls at school treated her, I'd complain about Alvin and our recording career, we'd both complain about our classes. Then we'd have some crackers or something, and get back to cuddling. It wasn't a very deep relationship, and I missed the whole acting-goofy-in-the-company-of-others thing that seemed to be part of high school romances. But I definitely enjoyed our times together.

Unfortunately for the two of us, this was happening just about the same time Simon and I tore up "Salt Peanuts". That song inflamed a passion in me deeper than even Elaine was capable of. I now wanted to spend all of my spare time in the basement with Simon working on new material. I tried to keep Elaine in the loop, and even invited her to watch as Simon and I worked out a new tune. She sat and watched us for about fifteen minutes, then said she had to leave. To my surprise, she said she found the whole thing "a bore" - strange, considering that it was my music that originally drew her to me.

About a week later, Elaine and I were back in the woods. We had been kissing for a bit when she suddenly pulled away from me and stared down at my foot. I had apparently started thinking of a rhythm, and begun tapping it out with my foot, all without really thinking about it. Elaine shot me a dirty look, grabbed her jacket and started marching off.

"Elaine, wait!" I shouted, running after her. "I'm sorry!" But suddenly I pulled up short, and watched her disappear through the trees. Was I sorry? Well, I was sorry that I had hurt her feelings, and that I had made her feel unimportant. But...no, I wasn't sorry about what had happened. In fact, I found my foot tapping out the rhythm again. This is a good one, I thought. I should play it for Simon.

I gave Elaine a bit of a head start, then left the woods, got on my bike, and headed back home. When I went down to the basement, Simon was there working something out on a toy piano he had bought. "Where is Elaine?" he asked. I just shook my head, sat down at my drum set, and waited until he was done so I could show him the rhythm that I had come up with. We eventually ended up using it as the basis for the Nutty Squirrels song "Zowee", and I guess it's not surprising that I can't play or hear that song without thinking of Elaine.

Elaine was no longer my girlfriend-not-girlfriend, but she at least tried to stay civil to me. She sort of had to - she couldn't exactly explain to her friends that we had broken up without first explaining that we were a couple, and she wasn't about to do that. She was sort of stuck not having anybody to talk to about it all. I could tell it was really difficult for her, and I ended up writing "I'm very sorry" on a piece of paper and slipping it into her locker. It was about all I could think of to do.

Unfortunately, my relationship with Elaine ended up being something of a template for all of my romantic relationships to come. A lot of things unspoken, a short period of pretty heavy passion, a settling into a pattern, a severe lack of communication, and a sort of fumbling break-up when they found life with Theodore Chipmunk wasn't all they hoped it would be. I'm sure the fault there lies with me. I could have been more open with my girlfriends, and I definitely could have worked harder at maintaining those relationships. It took me far too long to realize that even a good relationship needs work to hold it together. I mainly just let things happen, and not surprisingly, my relationships all sort of died of neglect.

To all the other past women in my life, a Theodore-Chipmunk-handwritten "I'm very sorry" for you, too.

While Simon and I kept pounding away at our Nutty Squirrels songs, we were still joining Alvin on Sundays to record as the Chipmunks. Most of the songs we were recording around that time were well-known children's songs that had something of a country feel. But on occasion, Dave would write something different especially for us. For instance, when the presidential election started to heat up in 1960, Dave wrote a song called "Alvin for President". Not surprisingly, it was just the latest entry in the "Dave wants us to sing a pretty song but Alvin messes it up" parade. Alvin keeps breaking into outlandish campaign promises - penny ice cream cones for everybody! - and offers me the job of his campaign manager, while Simon becomes his running mate. One small difference on this song was that Dave "lined" the song for us. On the record, he told us what each line would be just before we sang it. Because of that, Dave's on this record almost more than we are.

It's a bit ironic that the song we're singing underneath Alvin's campaign slogans is all about how well we get along. "We're polite," we sing, at Dave's direction. "We hardly ever fight." The song ends with Simon and me chanting "we want Alvin!" over and over. All of this at a time when Alvin was hardly talking to us. Was that intentional on Dave's part, I wondered?

"Nah," says Alvin. "I only saw Dave the same times as you did - on recording days. We didn't go out to lunch and share complaints or anything. I doubt Dave even realized that I had any issue with you guys."

Things had eased up quite a bit between Dave and us by this time. I don't recall if this thing happened the same Sunday we recorded "Alvin for President", but it was around that time. Dave was driving us back to Mrs. Gorman's after our session. As he pulled up, he said, "Oh, right, before I forget - Alvin, what's your favorite color?"

"Red," said Alvin.

"And you, Simon?"

"Royal blue," Simon said, precise as always.

"And how about you, Theodore?"

"Blue," I said. "But Dodger blue, not Cubs blue." I sneered at Simon, who gave me a smirk in response.

"Oh," said Dave, sounding a bit confused. "Well, what's your second-favorite color?"

"Me?" I asked. "Um...green?"

"Perfect. See you guys next week."

We piled out of his station wagon and watched him drive off.

"What do you think that was about?" I asked.

Simon adjusted his glasses. "I would theorize that he is creating a new song for us, where we sing about our favorite colors."

Alvin smiled. "Or maybe he's getting us all presents, and he's making sure he gets us the right colors."

I rolled my eyes at that, but for once, Alvin was right. We were getting a present. One that would keep on giving for years to come.