the tormented destiny of Lisa Marie Presley

In the life of Lisa Marie Presley, images are juxtaposed and often go in pairs. There is that of her mother Priscilla, an icy beauty dressed to the nines who forces her to learn French to appear respectable in the eyes of a new lover. Later, Lisa Marie, newly engaged to Michael Jackson, finds herself going around her kitchen three times looking for her favorite lipstick so she too can appear impeccable. There is the memory of his beloved father, Elvis, staggering in his room, addicted to many substances. Years later, Lisa Marie also dived; his children rented a tour bus to take him from Nashville to Los Angeles “because I wanted to do cocaine all the time and I wouldn’t have been able to if I had been on a plane.”

Above all, there is the King’s coffin, displayed for days in the family home at Graceland. Elvis’ only daughter was then 9 years old, and, hidden behind a door, she watched the thousands of worshipers pay homage to this beloved father, this “god” capable of “starting thunder”. In 2020, when her son Benjamin committed suicide at the age of 27, Lisa Marie preserved his body in dry ice in order to keep it awake as long as possible. “I think it would scare the crap out of anyone else to have their son like that at home. But not to me,” writes Lisa Marie in From Here to the Great Unknown : mémoireshis autobiography published on October 9 by JC Lattès (1). “I felt so privileged to have the opportunity to be present with him, to delay the deadline so that I could agree to let him go in peace.”

Also read“The stupidest thing I did”: in her memoirs, Lisa Marie Presley confides in this event which “devastated” her

Memories of a family like no other

Started by Lisa Marie Presley in 2022, completed and enriched upon her death (in January 2023) by her daughter, the actress and director Riley Keough, this two-voice biography narrates both the cost of fame, and how trauma are passed down from generation to generation. This dialogue between mother and daughter is a striking declaration of love, particularly in the last third of the book, when Riley, who has become a mother in her turn, takes up the story almost alone. “My mother was severely affected by what was written about her,” writes Keough, lucid and caring. “She had no siblings to share this burden, no one who understood how she truly felt. In a way, she was America’s princess, against her will.”

Born into the spotlight in 1968 in Memphis, Lisa Marie Presley spent a joyous and wild childhood destroying the lawns of Graceland aboard a golf cart, driven at full speed. Here, there are no rules: the only child of the biggest star in the world stays up until midnight, rides as much as she wants, and if her father asks for her, she appears immediately, he who showers her with kisses and jewels. Queen in her domain, she threatened to fire a cook when she was four years old who refused her a cookie.

Also read“I was always afraid that my father would die”: the revelations of Lisa Marie Presley in her posthumous memoirs

A tumultuous adolescence

Elvis’ death marks the end of a world. Under the care of her mother’s family who desperately try to “de-dirty” her, Lisa Marie rebels. “My mother’s parents thought I was nothing special. The change was so confusing that I was constantly screaming. I remember spending over an hour screaming and my mother’s younger brothers laughing while looking at me.”

At age 11, Lisa Marie was abused by her mother’s boyfriend, actor Michael Edwards. Priscilla forces her partner to apologize. “I felt guilty and I forgave him.” Turbulent, bad student, she was enrolled in half of the private schools in Los Angeles, from which she was inevitably kicked out, before finding refuge in the Church of Scientology – “Scientology raised me in place of my mother “. Here again, family history catches up with her. She was 14 when she began her first love affair, with a 23-year-old man – like Priscilla and Elvis. When she discovers that he is selling her photos to tabloids, Lisa Marie takes twenty valium pills to end her life.

“In my family there is a long line of young girls who became mothers when they were just children themselves. As I got older, I remember thinking that I wish I was my mother’s mother and my grandmother’s mother,” writes Riley Keough. Lisa Marie was 21 when Riley was born, 24 when Benjamin was born. She recounts, amused, how she “trapped” the father, her future ex-husband the musician Danny Keough, by calculating her ovulation cycle with her paternal aunts.

Welcome to Neverland

Then Michael Jackson enters the scene. Lisa Marie met him for the first time at 6 years old (he remembers, she doesn’t). When she falls in love with him, he is 35, and still a virgin. The King’s daughter deflowers the King of Pop.

“Michael was called ‘Mimi’ because my brother couldn’t pronounce his name,” Riley wrote. “Michael was extraordinary, he reminded my mother of his father. She told me that no one had ever managed to approach her father except Michael. (…) At home, they were a married couple like any other. They both dropped us off at school in the morning, like a normal family, except that Michael sometimes took a chimpanzee with him.”

Their story ends when Lisa Marie refuses to have his children. It is not the accusations of pedophilia against her – “I would have killed him myself if I had witnessed it” – but her growing drug consumption which convinces her to end it: “I have been so happy. I have never been so happy again.”

Also read‘I was terrified’: Lisa Marie Presley reveals Michael Jackson was ‘still a virgin’ at the start of their relationship

The age of reason?

The years that followed were sweet, according to Riley, “a decade during which she created a magical life for my brother and me.” Lisa Marie takes her children to Hawaii, Japan, a bohemian life with a few lovers, and lots of friends. The King’s daughter has indeed had several romantic relationships. Between 1999 and 2001, she was engaged to guitarist John Oszajca, before marrying Nicolas Cage in 2002, then divorcing in 2004. “She wanted every moment to be extraordinary. And then, there were those evenings when I came to her room and found her alone, lying on the floor listening to her dad’s music, in tears.”

It was with the birth of twins Harper and Finley in 2008, the fruit of her marriage to guitarist Michael Lockwood between 2006 and 2016, that Lisa Marie dove into opiates. The scarring from a painful cesarean section pushes her over the edge. “I suddenly became addicted to drugs at forty,” Presley writes. “I got to eighty pills a day.”

When Benjamin dies, Riley knows her mother will not survive. “I remember standing next to her while she tried to light her cigarette. She made multiple attempts for a good five minutes, without result. The cigarette never came closer than thirty centimeters to the lighter.”

Also read‘I took care of him, I kept him there’: Lisa Marie Presley reveals she kept her dead son’s body for several months

Riley’s voice and grief resonate in the book’s poignant final pages. Today alone at the head of the Presley empire – after a painful legal battle with Priscilla – the actress, who herself admits to having had an “absurd life”, demonstrates admirable gentleness and guides the reader through his mourning.

“My mother was like a hurricane,” she writes, echoing what Lisa Marie said of Elvis, this “god capable of influencing the weather.” “His power and strength scared people. She had an extraordinary ability to see deep into your soul. And she was capable of deep, unconditional love.” Lisa Marie rephrases: “I haven’t had any major musical successes, I never finished high school, I’m not pretty, I’m not good enough – but I’m a great mother.”

(1) From Here to the Great Unknown : mémoiresby Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough, eds. JC Lattès, 333 pages, 23.9 euros.