The one song Stevie Nicks refuses to perform: “You’re dead in the water”
Songwriting can be a pivotal tool allowing artists to deal with trauma and personal issues they’d prefer not to confront in ordinary daily life. Stevie Nicks is one artist who particularly mines from her life when searching for inspiration for material, but sometimes, she digs too close to the bone for her own good.
It’s one thing to turn these thoughts into songs in the comfortable surroundings of a music studio, but it’s a different beast altogether to perform it in a live setting in front of thousands. While some may be able to disassociate from the deep meaning behind each track, it’s easier said than done.
As Nicks knows first-hand, it can be extremely difficult not to relive the emotions that fuelled the initial song when singing it in concert. Therefore, with one track of a deeply personal nature, Nicks has refrained from performing it at every given opportunity.
Since achieving sobriety, Nicks has always been incredibly candid and open about her battles with addiction, helping countless people with similar issues. Of course, the singer wasn’t the first person in the entertainment business to fall into the tempting trap and wasn’t the last. Notably, actor Mabel Normand also succumbed to the same plights in the 1920s, and when Nicks discovered her tragic story, she felt compelled to pick up the pen to explore Normand’s life through song.
Using Normand as a vehicle to write about addiction was a more comfortable setting for Nicks to navigate the topic rather than approaching it from an autobiographical angle. Although her creation, ‘Mabel Normand’, is technically about the eponymous figure who inspired the Fleetwood Mac singer, it’s also about Nicks. If she hadn’t lost years of her life to substance abuse problems, she wouldn’t have gravitated towards Normand’s story in such an intense way.
For some background, Normand was born in Staten Island in 1893 and began working closely with Charlie Chaplin, who she mentored. For years, she was one of the leading names in the film industry, but contrarily, the latter period of her life was full of scandal. When she passed away in 1930, Normand was persona non grata in Hollywood after her name became sullied by scandal.
Although she was clean at the time of her death, Normand was cocaine dependent for an extended period and had a reputation for being associated with unsavoury characters. Notably, her frequent co-star Roscoe Arbuckle faced trial for the murder of Virginia Rappe in 1921. While he was eventually acquitted, Arbuckle was blacklisted from the film business.
Later, director William Desmond Taylor, who Normand grew close to while at the height of addiction, was mysteriously shot after she visited his residence. After a thorough investigation, the Los Angeles Police Department ruled her out as a suspect, but her standing was in pieces following the ordeal. It’s alleged Taylor was murdered by a contract killer hired by a drug dealer that the director was helping prosecutors catch.
The final blow to Normand’s career came in 1924. Her chauffeur, Joe Kelly, fired a pistol at the oil broker Courtland S Dines, who was left wounded from the shooting. From then on, in the eyes of Hollywood, it seemed like Normand was a poisoned chalice. Sadly, once she settled down by marrying Lew Cody in 1926, Normand’s health declined, and she eventually passed away due to tuberculosis.
When Nicks became acquainted with Normand’s life story, she immediately drew parallels between her position and the late star’s. The singer was acutely aware that her fate could have been the same as Normand’s if things had turned out differently. “Mabel was an amazing actress and comedian from the ’20s, and she was a terrible cocaine addict,” Nicks once explained. “She eventually died of tuberculosis, but it was really her drug addiction that killed her.”
She added: “I saw a documentary of her in 1985 when I was at my lowest point with the blow. I was watching TV one night, the movie came on, and I really felt a connection with her. That’s when I wrote the song. Less than a year later, I went to rehab at Betty Ford.”
Learning about Normand helped Nick immeasurably on her road to getting clean, and because of that, the song will always be incredibly emotional for her because of the connection between them.
In addition to the feelings that ‘Mable Normand’ evokes inside Nicks, it’s also extremely difficult to perform for technical reasons. Nicks once told Q: “If you take a breath, you get off the beat. You’re one word too late, you can never get back on, and you’re dead in the water.”
As ‘Mable Normand’ is a song that the Fleetwood Mac singer cares so deeply about, the prospect of potentially screwing it up is not a risk she’s prepared to take.
