Songfacts®:

• Stevie Nicks recalled to Billboard magazine how writing this song about the drug-addicted actress Mabel Normand led her to tackle her own addictions. "Mabel was an amazing actress and comedian from the '20s, and she was a terrible cocaine addict," Nicks explained. "She eventually died of tuberculosis, but it was really her drug addiction that killed her."
  
  "I saw a documentary of her in 1985, when I was at my lowest point with the blow," she added. "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."
• Stevie Nicks doesn't perform this song live because of all the syllables that are involved. She explained to Q magazine: "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."
• Stevie Nicks recorded "Mabel Normand" for 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault, her eighth solo album. The album features new versions of demos that Nicks primarily recorded between 1969 and 1987.
• The Polaroid that adorns the album's artwork was taken at a house on Sunset Plaza in 1985. And Nicks wrote "Mabel Norman" in that same house in 1985.
  
  "She was a silent movie star in the 1920s who had a rough life and was on her way to huge fame and fortune but became a drug addict and got involved in the seedy side of fame," Nicks told Uncut magazine. "I was dancing with the Devil at that point myself, so it scared me and I wrote that song."
• Nicks lost a godson to an overdose at a fraternity party. "Just insane," she said. "This was going on in 1985, in the 1920s, and it's going on today. I thought, maybe this song might save someone's life. It's the most important song on the record for me."