She saw her father’s body when she was nine years old, and her deceased son was laid out on dry ice for two months. Lisa Marie Presley’s memoirs provide a posthumous insight into a complicated life full of strokes of fate.
“Here’s the detail that will make the headlines,” writes The New York Times in its book review of Lisa Marie Presley’s fresh memoir. And she was right, from the USA via Germany all the way to Austria – after all, attention is the dominant currency on the internet. “After Ben’s death, Presley kept his body on dry ice in a temperature-controlled room at her home in Calabasas, California, for two months.”
“I think any other person would shit their pants in fear at the idea of having their son with them like that. But not me,” the book says. “I felt so lucky that there was a way I could still mother him, delay it a little longer until it was okay for me to lay him to rest,” Presley writes in the book “From Here to the Great Unknown – From here into the unknown. Memories”.
From the perspective of mother and daughter
In 2020, Presley’s son Benjamin took his own life. The death broke her mother’s heart, writes Presley’s daughter (and Elvis Presley’s granddaughter) Riley Keough in the book. She is known from the series “Daisy Jones & The Six”. Her perspective and that of her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, appear in alternating order, marked by different fonts. In the book, Keough quotes from her eulogy, which her husband Ben Smith-Petersen read at brother Benjamin’s memorial service: “Thank you for showing me that love is the only thing that matters in life.”
Lisa Marie Presley’s death was around a year and a half ago. When she died, her memoirs were not yet finished. Her daughter Riley Keough completed the book with the help of her mother’s tape recordings, Penguin Publishing said. The memoirs have now been published posthumously.
About Elvis’ death
About a month before her unexpected death during weight-loss surgery, her mother asked her if she would like to write the book with her, writes Keough in the foreword. It begins with the first years of Presley’s life, most of which she spent with her famous father at his Graceland estate in Memphis, Tennessee. “To me he was a god. A chosen one.” Even as a small child, she was also afraid of his death. “I knew something tragic was about to happen.” When Elvis Presley died in 1977 at the age of 42, his daughter (his only child) was nine years old – and experienced everything first hand. His lifeless body is carried past her out of the house. “I didn’t see his face, but I saw his head, his body, his pajamas and I saw his socks at the foot of the stretcher.”
Musician Elvis Presley with his wife Priscilla and daughter Lisa Marie (archive photo from 1968). WHAT / dpa
At this point, Lisa Marie Presley was already living in Los Angeles with her mother Priscilla Presley most of the time; her parents had separated. A new boyfriend of her mother later sexually harassed her, writes Lisa Marie Presley. She goes to numerous schools, consumes drugs and alcohol at an early age, is a temporary member of Scientology and, at the age of 20, marries the musician Danny Keough, with whom she has daughter Riley in 1989 and son Benjamin in 1992.
“Normal” marriage to Michael Jackson
In 1994 the marriage failed and Presley married the “King of Pop” Michael Jackson just a few weeks after the divorce. “I was really very happy. “I was never so happy again after that,” writes Presley. “We just wanted to be alone, normal, anonymous. I did his laundry and we ran errands together and went shopping.” Daughter Keough also writes that the two were “a completely normal married couple.” “In the morning they drove me to school, like an ordinary family.”
Presley often spends time in Graceland with her children, then they all sleep together in Elvis’ former bed. IMAGO / ZUMA Press
But in 1996 this marriage also collapsed. After that, two more of Presley’s marriages failed, one of them with Hollywood star Nicolas Cage. In 2008 she had twin daughters with the musician Michael Lockwood. She also pursues a singing career and releases three studio albums. Presley managed to live without drugs for a few years, but the addiction caught up with her again. At times she took around 80 tablets a day, she writes.
“I guess I didn’t really have a chance,” Presley herself writes in the book about life in the public eye, the constant headlines about looks, weight, drug use and her marriages. Keough also writes that her mother was very affected by “what people wrote about her.” “She had no siblings to share the burden with her, no one who understood what it really felt like. In a way she was the Princess of America and didn’t want to be.” (APA/ed.)
To the book
Lisa Marie Presley, Riley Keough: “From Here to the Great Unknown – From here into the unknown. Memories”Translated by Sylvia Bieker and Henriette Zeltner-Shane, Penguin Verlag, 240 pages, 29.50 euros
Offers of help
There are a number of support facilities and contact points for people in acute crisis situations. At suizid-praevention.gv.at you can find emergency numbers and first aid for suicidal thoughts.
Telephone help is also available at:
Crisis intervention center (Mon-Fri 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.): 01/406 95 95, kritikeninterventionszentrum.at
Advice and help if you are at risk of suicide 0810/97 71 55
Psychiatric emergency help (midnight to midnight): 01/313 30
Social psychiatric emergency service 01/310 87 79
Telephone counseling (0-24, free of charge): 142
Advice on the wire (midnight to midnight, for children & young people): 147
Conversation and behavior tips: Pleaselebe.at
