When I had signed on to take part in the cartoon in the 1980s, I was hoping to see my bank account bump up a little. But what I was expecting to be a little shot in the arm ended up being more like a round of steroids. Between the success of the cartoon, and the accompanying Chipmunks toys and games that were rushed to market, we suddenly had quite a bit of extra money coming our way. And while none of us were unhappy with this unexpected windfall, one of us had a few issues with it.

"The show's success messed with my head," admits Alvin. "It's kinda hard to explain. I had really hit bottom just a couple of years before, and after being in denial about it for some time, I finally had accepted it. I was resigned to the fact that I was going to have to slowly crawl my way back up, bit by bit. But suddenly here came these royalty checks. Simon had taught me how to budget my money and everything, but suddenly a lot more money was coming in. Part of me wanted to splurge, but I was petrified of going broke again. Kinda ridiculous, but it was keeping me up at night.

"But once more, Simon came to the rescue. He helped rearrange my royalty checks so that everything got split into two accounts. Half went into my regular savings account, and half into what I called my 'mad money' account. And Simon told me that that account was mine to splurge with. Any one-time purchase I wanted to make with the money in that account, I could. So if I wanted to go out for a nice dinner, or even buy a car...as long as I could pay for it with the money in that second account, I could go ahead and do it. It was a really good plan, and it calmed me down quite a bit.

"I did get a nice place to live. And no, not a Hollywood mansion with a yacht in the pool. I know some people picture us like that, but we've never been at that level. I found a cool little apartment on the ground floor of a large mission-style building, and I also splurged to buy a nice bed for it. I also bought a car. Not a Ferrari, though - a 1983 Honda Accord. Had it retrofitted and painted red, and learned to drive. It was nice to finally be able to drive to my assemblies, and not rely on my producer for rides all of the time."

Unfortunately, Alvin's driving days didn't last very long. "I was driving home from a summer camp assembly, in the left lane of the Santa Monica Freeway. Saw a bit of traffic ahead, and started to slow down. And this guy swung all the way out from the right lane and sideswiped me. Scared the hell out of me. I slammed on the brakes, and got rear-ended, too. The car ended up crushed against the concrete divider. My foot was broken, and my forehead was gashed open. I started freaking out, because I'm stuck inside the car. I couldn't get out from either side, because the car's got me wedged in place against the divider. I was yelling, pounding on the steering wheel, all of that.

"Then a song came on the radio, which had stayed on through the whole damn thing. 'Pop Life' by Prince, his latest hit at the time. And I loved the song, so I tried to focus on that. Singing the words I remember, picking out the chords in my head, tapping out the rhythm on the steering wheel. And that calmed me down. They finally wrenched the passenger door open, they looked inside, and there was this bloody chipmunk with a broken foot singing along to Prince. I almost said, 'can you guys wait until this song's over?'

"They set my foot, stitched up my head, gave me some little crutches and sent me home. I had to do a few assemblies like that, all bandaged up. We changed the script for those, made them a bit more cautionary. You know, 'If I hadn't been wearing my seat belt...' Which may have sent the message home a bit stronger."

Alvin bounced back physically, but he hadn't really recovered. "My head was kind of messed up afterwards. I was moody and depressed. Couldn't sleep. I started calling you and Simon more often, and talking for hours about nothing at all, just because I felt better while I was talking to you guys. Then I'd finally hang up, feeling bad about making you listen to my chatter for so long. But an hour later, I'd want to call you again. I should've gone to a therapist then, but...well, you know. It's a lame stereotype that all rodents are supposed to be cowards, and I was dumb enough to think seeing a therapist was like admitting I was scared."

How did he get over it? "Just bit by bit, as time went on. I did finally go to a therapist in the mid-90s, to finish working through some other stuff. And that helped a lot. But I never drove again. Back then, if anybody suggested I get another car, I'd just laugh it off. 'Drove it for six months and had the car destroyed, never again!' But actually, I was terrified to get back behind the wheel. I just took cabs if I needed to. Not the cheapest way to get around, but I had enough money in that 'mad money' account to pay for it." Alvin smirks. "Probably should've moved back to New York with you then. It would have saved me a bundle on long-distance calls, and at least you have the subway there."

It was during one of these lengthy phone conversations with Alvin that he told me that Ross and Janice had been working on something new together - a screenplay. I told Alvin, "That's cool that they're branching out into other areas. Do you know what their movie's about?"

"Oh, yeah - they told me the basic plot. It's kind of out there."

"A fantasy film?"

"Sort of, yeah. It's about three chipmunk brothers who are in band."

I sort of felt myself go cold over. "Ross and Janice are writing a Chipmunks movie?"

"Yep. And it looks like it's set to go, so prepare for another round of contracts."

Sure enough, we got a call from Janice within the next week or so. I invited Simon over for dinner to talk about it, and he seemed willing to take part.

"At this point, we were voiceover actors - nothing more," Simon explains. "I no longer perceived any connection between myself and the character I was voicing. We might have been providing the voices for the Smurfs in that regard. And this voiceover work had become unexpectedly lucrative." Simon had already planned to take a sabbatical during the fall of 1985, to make a few trips for his research. "I asked Janice if she could schedule the voice work around my itinerary, and she was most accommodating."

So in October of 1985, we flew out to Los Angeles to record the dialogue for the first Chipmunks movie. I was really excited during the trip out, but for a completely different reason. The Dodgers were in the playoffs, and I was going to be in town while they were playing! Robert pulled some strings with his friends, and managed to get a pair of tickets for Game 7 of the National League championship series. He met me in my hotel bar to watch Game 6, which the Dodgers needed to win in order to get to that seventh game.

"We drank beer, ate peanuts and hollered at the TV," remembers Robert. "It was almost like we were there at the game. We got a lot of looks, but who cares? It was the Dodgers in the playoffs! We were up 5-4 in the ninth, and both of us were getting excited. I was already looking forward to the game the following day. And then Jack Clark hit that three-run homer to win it for St. Louis. You screamed, 'Nooooo!' which I barely heard because I was screaming the same thing. We couldn't believe it. We stayed in that bar drinking until closing time, thinking of every terrible name we could to call Tommy Lasorda and Jack Clark."

Once more, our plan to see a Dodgers game together had fallen apart. We were beginning to feel like we were cursed somehow.

But there was one thing I did get to do on this trip to California. Alvin found a club not far from the studio where we'd be recording. And somehow, he convinced Hector's to book us to play a gig there. "It wasn't easy", Alvin says. "There were a lot of hurdles. First, I had to convince him that I was Alvin Chipmunk. Then I had to convince him that yes, we could actually play our instruments. I had to play him a solo rendition of 'My Sharona' to accomplish that. Next, I had to convince him to book us, even though he couldn't use the name 'The Chipmunks' - RCA wouldn't allow that. I finally got him to agree to it, but I had to put down a deposit against nobody showing up." Simon brought his bass out to California, and we arranged to have a drum set there for me to use.

Alvin also needed to come up with a new moniker for us. "I just called us AST, after our initials. I had Janice snap a photo of me with my guitar, in silhouette, and I made a few posters. AST with special guests Cemented. 'Sometimes a little rock goes a long way.'" Alvin grins. "That was the caption. Still have that one framed up on my wall."

It was a Tuesday when we played Hector's. The crowd was rather modest, but it was bolstered a bit by some of our California friends - Ross and Janice, Robert, and even Scooter. We opened with a Cemented gig, playing with Geoff, Roberta and a friend of Alvin's named Wyatt, who played guitar. I was curious about another full-sized guitar and amp off to the side of the stage, but when I asked about it, Alvin just smiled and said, "I've got a secret."

Once Wyatt was done, Alvin came on stage. He called out the numbers - mainly Chipmunks 1980 material, with a few Little Rocks numbers mixed in. As the set went on, I noticed that he wasn't calling out any of the Knack songs. But I figured he was just saving them all to do at the end of the set.

After a typically raucous version of "You May Be Right", Alvin stopped and addressed the crowd. "Thanks, everybody. This is only the second show of ours that I've been in charge of setting up. And it seems like each time I do one, I go and book a surprise guest without telling the other guys." He turned back to face us with a sheepish grin, and said, "Sorry, brothers. But I'd like to think it'll be worth it." He turned back to the crowd and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, from the Knack - Doug Fieger!"

If I had been surprised at my birthday gig five years earlier, I was absolutely floored now. Alvin got Doug Fieger to play with us?! Doug walked out, gave Simon and me a grin, then picked up his guitar. I looked down at my feet, and they were stomping like crazy. No, no, no, I thought. I can't screw this up. Not in front of Doug Fieger.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and counted off the opening to "Let Me Out". A few seconds in, I felt the groove take over. I started smiling, and my smile got bigger and bigger as the song went on. It's not like I was the best drummer Doug ever played with - Bruce Gary from The Knack was a monster on the drums. But that didn't matter. I was a musician, damnit. And my brothers and I were making music - damn good music - with the guy who wrote these songs. And it's impossible to explain how incredible that made me feel.

We made our way through "Let Me Out", "Frustrated", "Good Girls Don't", and (of course) "My Sharona". Then Doug asked if we could do "Walk Don't Run", and of course we said yes. Judging by the response we got, the crowd had a really good time. But I'm pretty sure it was nowhere near as good a time as we four on stage had.

"We treated Mr. Fieger to drinks at the bar following the performance," recalls Simon. "And we attempted not to sound too much like squeaky adolescents."

That was tough, because heck, we liked this guy's songs to cover an entire album's worth of them. But Doug was really cool. The Knack had broken up by this point, but he jokingly suggested they might get back together to record a full album of Chipmunk cover versions. "Hey, you guys covering the Knack helped get you back in the public eye. Maybe it'll work the other way around, as well!"

Alvin adds, "Once I got the idea to have Doug take part, I was bound and determined to make it happen. I made a ton of phone calls before finally tracking him down, then I just piled on the Alvin charm until he agreed to it." Alvin pauses a bit before continuing. "In a way, it was my thank-you gift to my brothers. For getting me back on my feet, and for all that you guys had done for me. It wasn't much, but I felt like I had finally at least attempted to pay you guys back."

And yes, amid all this rocking out and baseball drama, we also did the voices for a movie.

In The Chipmunk Adventure, as always, the Chipmunks and Chipettes are portrayed as early adolescents - perhaps twelve years old or so. Dave's out of town, so the Chipmunks are staying with the Chipette's adoptive mother. After playing a ballooning video game, they argue about who would be better at ballooning in real life. Overhearing their argument, a man offers to set them up in a competition - boys against girls - to balloon around the world, with a prize of a hundred thousand dollars. They all agree, and start planning a way to "ditch" their adoptive mother to set off on this race. It's later revealed that the man is using the chipmunk balloon race to smuggle diamonds to various points around the world.

...I'm sorry, but does any of this make any sense at all? I honestly can't say that I really remember what it was like being twelve. But I'm pretty sure if a guy had offered me a huge cash prize to compete in a balloon race at that age, I would have said, "Um, I don't think so. I've never been in a balloon before". And this wasn't a twenty-mile race - it went around the entire planet. The last way anybody would ever choose to smuggle diamonds would be entrusting them to novice-pilot adolescent chipmunks in hot air balloons. Chances are the diamonds would sink into the ocean three miles from the starting line...along with the chipmunks.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's just a cartoon for kids. But I kept shaking my head and saying "really?" I did eventually manage to shelf my disbelief somewhat. I got to a point where I would read the next part of the script, and think, "oh, OK, now Theodore was going to be treated as an African god". Then I'd shrug and work on reading my lines the best that I could.

I had a better time recording the songs. The backing music was typical mid-80s synth-pop, which was no surprise. No sense doing any trailblazing while recording music for a children's film, right? And given that, the songs were actually pretty good. "Girls and Boys of Rock and Roll" was catchy, and I think RCA was hoping for a hit single from that song - if not by us, then in a remake. Ross also managed to worked a nice bit into the film. He had Mrs. Miller (the Chipettes' mother) sing both "Witch Doctor" and "Come on-a My House", two of the biggest hits written by Ross's father.

What should have been the biggest musical moment from the film sadly never happened. Ross somehow got Jeff Lynne to write a song for us, which he recorded with his band Electric Light Orchestra. Yes - there exists an ELO song written specifically for the Chipmunks. We never got to meet him, but it was a huge honor, regardless. Due to record label issues, however, the song had to be cut from the film. The song "A Matter of Fact" ended up as an ELO b-side, and you can find it in their box set, too. It was replaced in the film with our rendition of "Wooly Bully", which was adequate but not exactly an even trade.

Disney had laid off a bunch of animators right around the time the film went into production, so Ross and Janice hired some of them up to handle the animation of the movie. Because of that, the cartoon at least looks really good. Unfortunately, they also subcontracted some of the animation work to an overseas studio, and that ended up causing major headaches and delays. As those problems began piling up, Ross and Janice had to make cuts in the film rather than wait forever for them to finish up. Twice, Alvin and Janice flew out to New York to meet up with Simon and me, so we could record new hastily-written dialogue to fill in some gaps.

The original plan was to have the film in theaters for Christmas 1986, but with all the delays, it finally saw the light of day (or dark of theater) in May 1987. The critics were surprisingly kind, but both Siskel and Ebert echoed my misgivings about the plot. They also made fun of my squeaky voice - thanks, fellas. The movie wasn't really a hit, but it wasn't really a bomb, either. I don't know the exact figures, but I think it more or less broke even. Today, the movie has more or less been forgotten, and honestly, that's probably the fate it deserves.