Floating Bride
Artist: Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Song: Californication
Album: Californication
Model: Lauren Slater
Location: Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset

Notes:-
This song must be one of the best lyrically (and some argue musically) about America’s (all the western world’s?) excesses. It was released in 1999 with an amazing video that was played constantly on MTV. It’s an extremely clever and damning reference to the plastic, meaningless, made-up world of Hollywood but surely has wider reaching meaning. Analysing the words, you realise they’ve been produced to test your understanding, giving deliberately vague lines for you to decide what each mean. The overall effect is quite stunning. Flea (the Chilli’s bassist), claims it’s the bands best song.

It’s one of those songs that makes me realise that inside, I’ve thought these things but have never really collated them together to produce an overall stance. California and Hollywood sits at the pinnacle of everything that is hideous about our culture and yet we still embrace and devour its content. Youngsters dream of fame and stardom. “First born unicorn, hard-core, soft porn”

The shot was conceived, ironically, not for this line but for a slightly different take on wedding fashion. We got special permission to shoot at Glastonbury Abbey and were later admonished for producing a shot of Lauren lying on the alter!

When I was looking through the lyrics I wanted to shoot next I saw this line, played the song and realised it worked perfectly.