The Red Hot Chili Peppers are among the highest-selling recording artists of all-time, with estimated record sales of around 120 million. This would put them in the same range as Frank Sinatra, Fleetwood Mac, Lady Gaga, Rod Stewart, and Adele, and significantly above David Bowie, Bob Dylan, the Doors and Prince. Their cultural reputation isn’t one that’s swung in one direction or the other; there are some bands of their era who’ve been valorized as more influential than they were given credit for (The Smiths, New Order) and others stigmatized for their perceived commerciality (U2, Guns N’ Roses), but the Red Hot Chili Peppers have been more-or-less accepted as being ubiquitous. Albums like Blood Sugar Sex Magik are thought by some as masterpieces, but they haven’t been at the center of much significant discourse. That’s not to say that the actions of the current members have never received negative press, but that their alleged misbehavior is quaint in comparison to that of contemporary artists.
A documentary about The Red Hot Chili Peppers was inevitable because it’s in every artist’s best interest to have some new media project that can help boost their album sales and expose their music to a new generation. While the upper-echelon of artists have their lives dramatized in sanitized biopics (the feckless Michael film a perfect example), many would settle for a streaming documentary that provides a quick hagiography for the uninitiated. It’s a welcome surprise that The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel doesn’t have those intentions; the title’s accurate in that the film is about “the rise,” and doesn’t devote attention to anything after 1991. Those expecting a methodical breakdown of the inception of “Under the Bridge” might be disappointed, as the song’s given a backhanded reference, as if to suggest that Anthony Kiedis and Flea have tired of explaining it over the years.
The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel has the same narrative conceit that a majority of band histories do; the future members connected in their youth, became drawn to one another as outsiders, and experienced the ebbs and flows of fame during a rise to prominence. The difference is that Flea, Kiedis, and the other members who phased in and out don’t have a thesis about the significance of their work that they’re out to prove. Much of the documentary is centered on refuting some claims; it was fashion designer Gary Allen, who’d given the gang some of their first performance opportunities, who came up with the name “Red Hot Chili Peppers” to emphasize the explosive, confrontational persona that would attract some notoriety. The benefit that director Ben Feldman had is that these men have no reason to lie, and are surprisingly candid.
It’s easy to buy into the earnest emotions expressed by Flea and Kiedis because the film is a sincere tribute to Hillel Slovak, the band’s original guitarist, who died in 1988. A majority of Red Hot Chili Peppers fans came to the group during the era of John Frusciante, who’s framed as being “the replacement.” Frusciante is an accomplished guitarist, but he’s used in the film to underscore the unusual methodology that Slovak used to form the group. All of the surviving members recognize that there’s no logical reason they should exist; they’d been involved in different bands, experienced tumultuous arguments, and came from marginalized backgrounds. Although there’s a risk of lionizing Slovak, the film doesn’t suggest that he was the sole genius in the band as much as he was its ultimate orchestrater. Slovak was the first to befriend these “weird kids” who came from abusive homes when they were in elementary school, and he inspired them to amp up their stage personas to spark greater creativity. Even though it's nearly 40 years since his passing, Flea and Kiedis get choked up talking about the person who “saw” them for the first time, and became the brother they never had.
The impression given by the film is that Slovak wasn’t only responsible for pushing his bandmates to continuously draw in new inspirations; Flea admits that they’d never seen themselves as part of a specific movement, and had drawn as much from alternative and psychedelic rock as they had drop funk mental and hip-hop. The discomfort shown by Flea, Kiedis, and to a lesser extent Frusciante, is that Slovak never saw himself as superior, but showed signs of spiritual, reckless genius.
Many tears are shed in The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel, but it’s not a sob story. Kiedis, Flea, Frusciante, Jack Irons, and their occasional collaborator George Clinton discuss the rambunctious days and nights of their early years with half-hearted embarrassment, a stark contrast to Motley Crue, who used their own Netflix film to celebrate their excesses. It’s in talking about Slovak that they reach moments of self-actualization in regards to the fusion of social commentary, experimentation, aggression, and genre mixing that made the Red Hot Chili Peppers an enduring sensation. The intention to be Slovak’s eulogy is successful, but those who gathered to honor their friend inadvertently published their own confessional.