The little-known formative years of the members of punk-funk-rap-rockers Red Hot Chili Peppers are given the documentary treatment in the Netflix doc The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel, with Hillel being the founding guitarist, Hillel Slovak, who played on the band's first three albums - The Red Hot Chili Peppers (1984), Freaky Styley (1985), and The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987) - before succumbing to a heroin overdose in June 1988, just two months after his 26th birthday.
Covering how the band came together with the meeting of bassist Flea (an immigrant from Australia), Slovak (from Israel), and drummer Jack Irons at LA's Fairfax High School where Irons and Slovak played in a band named Anthym led by Chile-born Alain Johannes (who's had a long, diverse career), adding Flea when Slovak taught him bass because they weren't happy with their existing bassist. Vocalist Anthony Kiedis was a fan whom Slovak met after a show and invited to hang out and they all became fast friends, hanging out, taking drugs, being young and dumb.
What was new to me, a casual RHCP fan, was that the Peppers were considered a side project to Irons and Slovak as Anthym, renamed to What Is This (somehow an even worse name than Anthym), had a record deal. Flea came and went a couple of times to play with LA punks Fear and Kiedis's involvement was more of a joke than a serious thing at first.
As the band got more notoriety they eventually got signed and Irons and Slovak played on the debut album, but were also sticking with What Is This until RHCP got big enough to dominate their attention. As the years passed, the drug use of Kiedis and Slovak crossed beyond heavy recreational to debilitating junkie levels culminating in producer Michael Bienhorn firing Kiedis during the Uplift Mofo sessions because he finally showed up with no lyrics written. Kiedis went through detox, got clear, and became productive, but of course when it came time to celebrate completing the album, he and Slovak got wasted.
With interviews with all surviving members, Slovak's brother and girlfriend, and other contemporaries along with lots of archive footage, The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel is an interesting overview of the band's origins and struggles with success and substances.
While the members are candid about their drug habits and how they contributed to the environment that claimed their brother, the doc completely omits the irony that Slovak's replacement, John Frusciante, who speaks about how he devoted himself to transforming his playing style to mirror Slovak's, also picked up his crippling heroin addiction habit which led him to quit the band after their Blood Sugar Sex Magik album made them too popular for his taste. (He would come and go several times since.)
The first album with Frusciante, Mother's Milk, which also marked the debut of drummer Chad Smith (from Detroit and who taught at the music store I took guitar lessons from a member of Sponge at) is completely Memory Holed with no mention of Smith even though Irons left the band upon Slovak's death. Weird.
On the A/V front, I didn't notice anything particularly special about the Dolby Vision and Atmos presentation. Netflix has announced they're jacking up the Premium Tier rate to a whopping $27 and that's my tapout point. I'm cutting back to the Standard Tier with only HD streaming for a still too much $20. Jerks.
Score: 7/10. Catch it on Netflix.
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