If you’re subscribed to this newsletter, I probably don’t need to tell you about the new documentary, The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother Hillel, that began airing on Netflix earlier this month. But for those of you who have somehow swerved the news, or if you were holding out for whatever reason, I’d encourage you to get onto it pronto. It’s well done and features a heap of brand new footage, and anything that focuses on Hillel is great addition to the Chili Peppers canon.

I had a few moments of thrilled joy watching it. Finally, somewhere fairly legitimate got the date of the first show right (well, the month right, at least). I was watching with bated breath expecting them to dole out “February 1983” yet again, but there it was. Years of work finally paying off. And this is a blink and miss it kind of moment, but when the first demo session is recounted, the text on-screen shows where it took place: Studio 9 Sound Labs, in Hollywood. I’m pretty sure that information was uncovered by yours truly - we used to think that session took place at Bijou Studios.

That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Long lonely nights researching, finally getting to the bottom of some bit of information, getting it out there into the world and watching the record be corrected in real time. That the filmmakers went to the effort of actually getting this stuff correct is a great sign.

There were bits I’m a little iffy about. The use of AI, whether it was to recreate Hillel’s voice, or the generative kind used in some of the artwork, is pretty gross, artistically and ethically. And there were some timeline issues that you’d really only notice if you’re a mega-fan; photos and footage being out of place, footage mis-used to portray certain stories, the insinuation that Addie Brik was Hillel’s girlfriend right up until his death…

But all in all, we’ve got the early era of the band being celebrated right there, on the front page of 325 million Netflix accounts, and how can that be a bad thing?

Max Elfimov, whose name you’ll see in the credits, helped with archival photos and footage. As far as I’m concerned, Max is one of the tentpoles of this band’s fandom. You might have read his obituary for Jack Sherman on this letter, or his (frankly insane) contribution to the Deluxe Desires letter. When I heard he was working with the filmmakers I was thrilled, because I knew now they wouldn’t just be looking in the same places as everyone else.

I have very vivid memories of sitting on Max’s website back in 2006 or so, trying to download bootlegs and B-sides at excruciatingly slow dial-up speed, pondering if, because his site was from Russia, I was going to wind up with some sort of virus on my Dad’s work laptop. That never happened, of course, all I wound up with was the first batch of mp3s that lead me to the type of fan I am today.

And here we are 20 years later!

Here’s an interview with Max that goes over his life, his work for the band, and his hopes for the future.

Long time readers will probably be familiar with you, but why don’t you give us a background about yourself and your time being a fan of the band?

Hello, Hamish! I don’t think I’m such an interesting person to unveil my story, that’s why I always focused only on band’s archival stuff on my pages. But since you asked I’ll tell about the background.

The whole story looks like a full circle. I became a Chili Peppers fan because of “Freaky Styley” - the record where Hillel played. And being a part of documentary project is an honour for sure.

I was born in Soviet Union in 1980s & had a privilege to have a very unique childhood: part of it was spent in Soviet atmosphere, cause even when USSR collapsed, the aura of soviet legacy was alive at least until 1995-1996. Part of it was in Europe, my dad had a business in Hungary, so I was able to feel the privilege of a cozy western lifestyle of 1990s. That formed my personality. Since my childhood days I wanted to learn as much as possible about all the subjects of my interests. When I collected figures of lions & crocodiles from Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs I learned about variations of figures and countries produced it. Then I was very much interested in story of the Walter Lantz studio and the first Woody Woodpecker early 1940’s cartoons. I was obsessed with history of cinema, watched silent movies, learned all possible about George Méliès when I was 10 years old. That seems wild and a bit autistic for a kid, but I enjoyed it so much.

Knowing deeper details helped me feel music & cinema so much better – when you know all the creative aspects you feel more. For example, I enjoyed “Pantry Panic” cartoon even more when I learned it’s from 1941 – that’s why all that brutal humour was – the world was involved in WWII & that was reflected even in cartoons. Those were pre-Internet days, very hard to find anything, especially in Russia right after the end of The Soviet Union. But all this taught me to search for the info everywhere, that’s how this research template formed.

Same was with music. First I was deep into Beatles, Hendrix, Zappa & T-Rex. I collected bootlegs (that was hard, cause I didn’t have internet back then), collected all possible books, spent all my pocket money to buy vintage vinyl & began to play guitar. I listened to Lennon, Zappa & Hendrix records & played guitar trying to replicate the most important parts. At some point of life I was tired of all this classic rock, prog rock & various stuff & was into early 1990s electronic music like Aphex Twin & early Prodigy. I knew about Chili Peppers since early 1990s, remembered their concert at Red Square, and was neutral. But when I discovered “Freaky Styley” I was blown away how good it was and how different it was from the music I was listening to (though it had some Hendrix vibes). I listened to the first two albums & 1983 demo tapes many times a day and began reading more and more about the band’s story. That’s how I became a fan.

I wrote a book about their EMI years that became successful in Russia & I’m currently trying to translate it and make it available worldwide. It’s about the creative side of their 1980’s life avoiding most of notorious stuff from that era. Around the same time with Chili Peppers I became very interested in the story of the most popular Belorussian band – Lyapis Trubetskoy. That’s how I made my first online archive of photos and videos. Their leader, Sergey Mihalok, was mad at me for doing this, claiming “it’s a weird stalker thing.” Finding some old forgotten articles & stuff ruined the band’s current media image, so he was really not happy about my activities, ha ha!

But years later he made a phone call & we chatted for about two hours. After years of being annoyed the band embraced what I did. “Sorry, you’re not a stalker, you’re a historian, I was wrong,” he said. Since then I helped the band to keep their archival stuff intact & when something old and rare was needed they asked me first.

Back in 2002 I watched an MTV documentary “Biorhythm” about Anthony’s life and was completely shocked about Hillel’s tragic story. So I began to search for any information about him. And the quantity of the information was very small. It was the very beginning of Internet & all we had was a small site called “Israeli Cowboy” that had crappy quality copies of Hillel’s photos from “Behind the Sun” book. That’s when I began to save photos.

Then, around 2004, I began downloading stuff via Soulseek & eMule - that was the main source for my collection back then. By 2005 I already had Uplift Demos (never released officially), the Rockpalast 1985 video, Europe by Storm documentary, etc. I remember how most fans laughed at it - in 2005 RHCP were considered as a modern band & nobody cared about archival stuff. Before RHCP I was diving deep through tones of Beatles bootlegs & had the same attitude here (though literally no fans understood it).

I saved every new Slovak/Sherman era photo to my laptop and slowly began to enlarge my archival collection. I launched a small fan site entitled RHRSANDSE (Red Hot Rare Songs & Something Else) which had rare audios videos, it all looks funny and too naïve nowadays. But I know you, Hamish, was my often visitor back then! Thank you!

By 2022 I collected literally all available 1980s band’s photos, videos & audios. My dear mom died in November 2022 leaving me deeply depressed, so to get rid of the darkest thoughts I had I needed to do something mechanical and monotonous. And I took all the vintage Chili Peppers’ photos & videos I had and began uploading it with details about dates, photographers, etc., in chronological order. Had I been in a normal condition, I am not sure this ever would have happened. But that was a proper way to survive this tragical loss.

How did you get involved in the documentary project?

A couple of years later I received an offer from James Slovak, and that was a very special moment. I followed James on Facebook since 2016 or 2017. He posted a lot of old band’s photos there & his followers asked a lot of questions: Where was it made? When was it made? James lives his own life without being attached to some researchers’ things, so he often replied like “1980s” or “LA.” I was that one annoying guy who replied to these questions like “That was from ‘Mind My Have Still I’ music video, Spring 1984”, etc. And I replied many times.

One day James sent me a message asking if I ever knew his brother personally. I told him I was small when Hillel passed & lived in the USSR, so James said that he is impressed by my knowledge and never met any other fan being so deep in Hillel’s story. I sent him a link to my photo archive and he replied: “That’s crazy, I’ve never seen a lot of these photos”.

Two months later James sent me a message that was like: “Hey man, you know a lot about my brother & you have a lot of stuff about him. I am planning to do an epic documentary about my late brother and his life, would you like to help me?”.

To say I was happy is an understatement. First of all, I couldn’t believe that there will be a full scale documentary about a man, who always inspired me. I was waiting for such a thing since 2002-2003 & didn’t think that will ever happen. Having an offer to help from his brother is something special. So I instantly agreed & the process began.

James introduced me to Ben Feldman who was chosen as a director for this project, we chatted a bit & I was chosen as an archival researcher. For sure Ian Kelsey is the official archival man for the movie & we were introduced to each other, but my mission was to find all possible video & photo stuff for the film since not so many footage surfaced. There were very few known footage of Hillel, that was one of the reasons James came up with the idea to use the AI to read the diaries.

The first task was to write down a list of all known Hillel-era footage. I made a list & potential owners & sent it to Ben & James. Then James asked me if I know where to get a copy of Europe by Storm without the subtitles. Just three months prior to this I interviewed Dutch director Bram Van Splunteren for my book. So I texted him saying that the footage is needed & he was like “Who needs that? Documentary about Hillel? Are you kidding me, apart from you I literally never met fans who are interested in his story.” I told him about James & he said he is not sure if something extra will be found. Bram went to VPRO archive and found not only the released tapes but also a lot of unused footage - all in fantastic quality. We were so happy.

Then I knew that some studio owned MusiCalifornia TV shows archives, I had their contacts for decades but they never wanted to share anything without money. They had interesting footage: September 1985 interview with a jam session, and some 1987-1988 unused footage. I sent Ben their contacts and even more stuff was added.

I also had an hour length footage of Freaky Styley sessions and told Ben about the original owners (MTV). That’s how more archival footage appeared. I guess it was Alain Johannes who shared this unique 1980 Anthym video with AK in the beginning. Some more LA streets footage, music videos, live videos & the archival basis of the film was formed.

I was asked to upscale & fix some archival photos for the documentary which I did with enthusiasm, but most of photos used were fixed by me before, in 2022-2024, for my photo archive. A lot of photos were used from it, I didn’t even expect that. Especially one photo from October 1985 with mohawked Flea & Hillel during a signing session. I saved it in very poor quality from one of those vintage fan sites on AOL or TRIPOD & recorded on cd-r back in 2005. 20 years later I discovered this disc in my village house in the attic & found that pic there. It never ever surfaced anywhere else since 2005, so I upscaled it & uploaded to my archive. It was crazy to see it in the film.

A bit later, James told me he contacted Flea, AK, Jack Irons, George Clinton & John Frusciante and they all agreed to give interviews. I told James to invite Cliff Martinez who worked with Hillel for 2 years, visited his funeral & was an integral part of early band. Also I told James to invite Lindy Goetz – the “fifth Chili Pepper”, cause he was their manager for 15 years, a father figure and a person who did a lot for their success. James replied, that there were too many speakers already, so didn’t invite them.

But I still insisted to contact Lindy – his video archives always seemed to me like a chamber full of gold. Goetz constantly filmed RHCP while on tour in 1984-1987 and had a lot of funny and unique stuff on his tapes, that would have formed a great archival part for the film. The crew contacted Lindy and… sadly Goetz lost all of his archives. The tapes were damaged after years of unproper keeping. A chamber of gold was lost, that’s really horrible…

Fun fact: when Jack Irons was interviewed, he told the team about me. I was really shocked cause I never contacted Jack. Still don’t understand how did he learn about my existence. If Flea still remember me I guess he hates me haha. But Jack… never met and no connections!

After the photos were fixed & the footage was found, Ben introduced me to Ian Kelsey – the archival producer. He made a long list of photos & sent me it along with a google disc full of photos – I needed to recognize the date and the authors of each picture. It was not very hard, cause I knew most of these pics and after decades of research could easily understand which was Edward Colver and was Howard Rosenberg, etc.

The work was done & I was waiting. Before the first news about the documentary leaked James asked me to design some merch to support the film. I was thinking it would be a part of the band’s official merch, cause I was thinking the band would make the doc as the official one. That’s when I began writing dumb stuff in my social networks like “Hey, I made a design for official merch & I’m so proud”, tagged the band and all that haha. Pretty sure Dave M., Flea and others were mad at me (if they noticed these posts) or at least thought that I’m an idiot. After the first documentary news about film appeared in media, Ben asked me to stay silent until the official release which I did.

To be honest, at some point I didn’t expect to see my name in closing credits, cause people like me are small for such monsters as Netflix. But I was pleased to see.

When James asked me should he pay me money for the project I decided not to ask for it. I live in Russia, we are separated from the rest of the world by sanctions & PayPal doesn’t work for me (same with cheques). Also I don’t think it’s fair enough to ask money for a project you’ve been waiting for decades. Money or free tickets for band’s show – it’s not what I would have asked for in terms of this project. Probably the only thing I could have asked for this was having an opportunity to meet Flea & AK, ask them some questions about the history of early deeper cuts like “Set it Straight” or “Millionaires Against Hunger” (cause I’m afraid nobody will ask them details about it) and ask them to sign a couple of my old records (I still need AK’s graph on almost fully signed debut lp – he is the last missing, but I hardly think it will ever happen).

But that’s unreal in 2026 (possibly could have been real in 1996 but not now). So seeing my name in credits is already an enormous “thank you” I am pleased with.

What were your thoughts seeing the documentary for the first time?

I watched the documentary on the day of its release, together with my wife who is not a Chili Peppers fan but knows a lot about cinema and is often very strict about documentaries. We both loved it. I was a bit nervous after all the controversy, though was hoping it would be great. It was even better than I expected, though for me as a huge fan of early days that was not enough – I wish there was more about Cliff Martinez & Jack Sherman. A three-part documentary would have been so much better, but I’m still happy with the result – the documentary is great both for fans who are not deep into Slovak & for hardcore early fans too.

It’s kinda funny, that during the most of the documentary I had that weird feeling like “Shit! They used this photo! I remember how I fixed it while grabbing my cat Pusha’s ass back in 2023”. That was really entertaining. Parts where Flea cried were really hard and emotional. I didn’t shed a tear while watching it but was very touched.

The AI part is ok. Even though we found a lot of archival footage, that’s sadly not enough. Hillel’s voice sounds ok here. And all the AI hate I see nowadays looks like hate for silent movies in 1920s and hate for color movies in 1930s. People were always aggressive towards new technologies, I bet in 10-15 years clever use of AI will be considered as something normal. (Hard disagree, Max! - HD)

The most fantastic thing was this 1980 Anthym footage with all the gang together including AK. Also I was so much impressed watching all the stuff Bram shared in super quality – I watched “Europe By Storm” many times but it was like watching something new. Footage where all the members played drums was crazy too, I knew it existed but never seen it.

What are some of your favourite moments archiving and researching the band?

The best moment was when one day I discovered some MTV 1980s archives that were never seen by anyone or seen but long forgotten. An interview in NYC studio from 1984, a 1-hour footage from “Freaky Styley” sessions, footage with Blackbyrd McKnight. Since 2005 I always thought people who discover & share this are real heroes, so now I was in their position. Sad thing I was asked not to share the entire videos, but I was still happy to share partial footage, especially “120 Minutes” report with McKnight.

In 2022 I found some Japanese site which had absolutely great 1984-1985 photos by Ed Colver that were never published anywhere before. Seems Ed did merch for his exhibition & the company involved in promoting it in Japan uploaded some photos on their site, so when I found it I was super happy. These photos are often used now in fan accounts.

A real highlight was when I enhanced the legendary Jake Shear photo of AK, Flea & Hillel from September 1982 (AK was with mohawk) & 3-4 months later I saw the official Chili Peppers account uploading my version of this photo. I still don’t understand how it happened but that was very impressive.

(The band’s Instagram has used photos lifted directly from my site before a few times too! - HD)

As for research of material things – I found a fully signed copy of “Freaky Styley” vinyl on eBay once. The price was $250 & it originally belonged to late Art Boerke, the club promoter. AK, Flea, Cliff & Hillel signed it in November 1985 & after Art died someone was selling his property. I bought a record and was happy with it. Later George Clinton, Maceo Parker & Bennie Cowan added their signatures to this record, George was impressed & gave me a hug. That was great.

Right now I just finished enhancing photos for new Michael Beinhorn’s book “Taste the Pain”. Michael knew about my activities & asked me to share some photos from The Uplift and Mother’s Milk sessions. I did. He liked it & asked if I can enhance the chosen ones. I was happy to do it.

Do you have a favourite set of photos/photoshoot?

All of 1984-1985 photos by Howard Rosenberg are my favourite. The man knew how to capture the band properly & he did. Also I was always a fan of Cliff era, so seeing pictures from this time is always great. I guess my favourite photoset is the one for the debut album, where Jack Sherman had a red lobster on his head. Number 2 was Ed Colver’s set for Freaky Styley promo with redhaired Flea & a cocker spaniel Barnie.

From the 1990s my most favorite is from June 1995, by Anton Corbijn. Black & white and artsy in the best way. Absolutely love it. Especially the pic with AK in vintage hat & with demonic Flea. The pic reflects their characters so good.

Do you have anything that you know exists but haven't been able to find?

For decades the main Holy Grail for me was early 1985 demo tape with future Freaky Styley songs they recorded with Jack Sherman. It’s a kind of crazy combo: Freaky Styley is my favorite record & Jack is my favorite player. Really excited to hear how these songs sounded with him (some live recordings exist, but very few). I am afraid that will never be released and will hardly appear anywhere due to common lack of interest in this era.

The second thing is debut album second demo with Jack & Cliff, pretty sure it sounds amazing. Andy Gill spoke about this tape. Sadly it will hardly ever surface due to the same reasons.

Debut album sessions together with Human Satellite closing my top-3 of holy grails for sure. I want to hear this mystical song & to hear the original sound of all the tracks without all the overdubs and reverb.

I always wanted to hear the original bass/rap home demo’s similar to “What It Is”, pretty sure “Baby Appeal” & “American Ghost Dance” were recorded that way. Sad thing tapes may be lost forever.

As for videos - the first video of the band playing in Club Lingerie in July 1983 is one of the most desired. AK used to own the tape but not sure if he still has it.

Any footage of debut album era is a holy grail for me. Not too many known to exist.

I know most fans are attached to BTW/SA stuff and grails so I think the first records will never get a deluxe reissue with demos and rehearsal stuff. But I still hope that some former EMI workers have copies and will probably share it - that’s the only way to get these gems.

For sure the whole controversy story about the documentary made things sour. I remember how happy I was when saw the first official announcement of film via Pitchfork, then how mad I was when the next news reports described it as “RHCP documentary about band’s long story” and how upset I was when saw band’s message in the morning. I know that James wanted to call the documentary “Behind the Sun”. I know that Netflix changed the title to make it look more desirable. I understand it annoyed the band. But I’m happy this wonderful documentary ruined the most of controversy. It’s a beautiful tribute for a great late person I highly recommend to watch. And seeing all the negative side of the story makes me really sad. Life is not something eternal, so I guess everyone involved should be proud and no conflicts needed.

I think Netflix should have discussed with James, AK & Flea the title change. And they should have chosen it together. That would have been fair enough.

Thank you!

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