The Fall song about Mark E. Smith’s “Final Destination” experience at Disneyland
Fronting The Fall was a figure as divisive as he was unique: Mark E. Smith. With his distinctive snarling vocals, enigmatic presence, and often idiosyncratic lyrics, Smith was a driving force behind post-punk in the 1980s and beyond. Famously cantankerous and uncompromising, Smith led an inconsistent lineup with a singular artistic vision, challenging his devout followers to embrace the unconventional.
Between 1979, the year of Live at the Witch Trials, and Smith’s death in 2018, The Fall remained notably prolific, releasing a total of 33 studio albums. The legendary broadcaster John Peel described The Fall as his favourite band on several occasions throughout his life and was famously quoted describing the band as “always different (…) always the same”.
In this paradoxical statement, Peel acknowledges The Fall’s ever-evolving musical style and thematic trajectory that are married to a constant of bleak, industrial soundscapes, repetitive lyrical motifs and Smith’s pugnacious delivery.
Throughout this journey, Smith defined himself as a hardened, complex character no stranger to a pub brawl. It is, therefore, difficult to imagine Smith, or any brazen working-class Mancunian for that matter, sobbing with fear whilst riding a rollercoaster at Disneyland. Alas, according to Brix, Smith’s ex-wife and former member of The Fall, this occurred during a 1984 visit to the theme park in California.
“I convinced Mark to go to Disneyland with me, and my grandfather Mark thinks he’s psychic,” Brix was quoted in a booklet accompanying the 2010 reissue of The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall. “We went on this ride called the Matterhorn… It’s huge, you can see it from the freeway… it’s a scary bobsled ride that goes through tunnels of the Matterhorn. We got off the ride, and I swear to fucking God, Mark was crying, I asked what was wrong and all he could say was that the ride was evil. I said it was ridiculous as I’d been going on it since I was eight.”
Smith’s tears weren’t the end of the peculiarities that day, however. As Brix unfolds the story, she suggests that Smith had a Final Destination-style premonition. “To calm him down, I took him on the ‘It’s A Small World’ boat ride which is the cheesiest, old-school baby ride with dolls,” she continued. “We’re walking back from it, and a rectangular-shaped bush parts and a mini-fire engine comes out, and on the back is a nurse. It drives to the Matterhorn.
“The whole ride gets cordoned off, and people with walkie-talkies and clipboards are running everywhere, it was panic. Mark was right – something just happened on the Matterhorn. They closed the whole place down. We went home and saw the news: it was all ‘Death at Disneyland’. Someone had either jumped out of the Matterhorn or fell out and was trapped and decapitated by the oncoming bobsled, and it took mountain climbers, like, six hours to get the body off there. And that was ‘Disney’s Dream Debased’.”
“The person who died was Dolly Regene Young. Which was even more bizarre because my nickname from my grandparents was Dolly,” she added.
As Brix notes, the remarkable story was obliquely documented in ‘Disney’s Dream Debased’, a song appearing on The Fall’s seventh studio album, The Wonderful and Frightening World Of…, released in October 1984.
“The nurses climbed up/ Our faces pale/ And there was no doubt at all/ No two ways about it/ Was the day Disney’s dream debased/ Saw a mouse, who flapped at my wife/ And she told him what/ And she told him what had gone down/ Who then did not know the extent of the show/ The evil had gave in the mouth of the ride,” the lyrics read.
Although Brix didn’t reveal a date, it is documented that on January 3rd, 1984, a 48-year-old woman named Dolly Young was decapitated by another bobsled after being thrown from her own railcar into the tracks. An investigation concluded that Young’s seatbelt was unfastened, but whether this was due to a malfunction or deliberate action wasn’t determined.
Listen to ‘Disney’s Dream Debased’ by The Fall below.
