As the only child of Elvis Presley, Lisa Marie Presley, who has died aged 54, spent her life in the spotlight, much of it covered by her father. She spent years as tabloid fodder, a frenzy fueled by four marriages, including one with Michael Jackson at the height of his fame and, later in life, outlined in three albums that first revealed her story and later based on her father’s musical roots. Her legacy was not just musical; as his sole heir, she became extremely wealthy and nominally controlled his lucrative estate.
Her life in the tabloids began literally at birth, with the first pictures of her proud parents, Elvis and Priscilla (née Beaulieu), whom the singer had courted since meeting her when she was 14 and the daughter of a colonel at a US Army base in Germany. where the most famous private in the world served. Lisa Marie was born in Memphis, Tennessee, nine months after her parents’ marriage. She spent her early years in Graceland, but when she turned five, she moved with her mother to Los Angeles; the Presleys divorced in 1973. Lisa Marie regularly visited Memphis, where her father adored her, once flying her on a private plane to Idaho so she could see snow for the first time and play in it for an hour. She was at Graceland when Elvis died in August 1977.
Elvis Presley and his wife Priscilla leave Baptist Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee with their infant daughter Lisa Marie in February 1968. Photo: Bettmann Archives
In Los Angeles, her mother was more disciplined, but after she converted to Scientology, she enrolled her in the church’s Apple School. Lisa Marie dropped out of Westlake School for Girls when she was 17. Her life was increasingly wild until the following year she woke up after a drug-fueled party and went to the local Scientology church. She ended up living in their Celebrity Center on Sunset Boulevard and met musician Danny Keough there. They were married at Scientology headquarters in 1988.
On her 25th birthday in 1993, she inherited the Elvis Presley Trust, which included a business company and a charitable foundation that Priscilla had set up as Elvis’ performer. At that point it was worth about $100 million, but when Elvis died it was only worth about $5 million and owed more in taxes. Lawsuits against Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker, helped restore some of his fortune, and Lisa Marie became a notable philanthropist.
Lisa Marie Presley as a child with her parents Priscilla and Elvis, 1970. Photo: Sipa/Rex/Shutterstock
In 1994, after six years of marriage and the birth of a son and daughter, Lisa Marie left for the Dominican Republic, divorced Keough and a few weeks later married Jackson. Asking for privacy, they returned to the US and began their honeymoon at Trump Tower in New York. Lisa Marie first met Jackson when she was seven years old at a show in Las Vegas, but they became friends in 1992. When allegations of child abuse emerged at his Neverland mansion, where, like Graceland, everything revolved around him, Lisa Marie felt “he was wrongly accused and, yeah, I started falling for him…I wanted to save him.” But in another interview, she claimed she “didn’t know what was on his menu.” She felt that Jackson was in a “comparable situation to mine” and did not want to marry another man “who gets trampled because they just become Mr Presley”. They divorced in 1996.
In 1997, she appeared in a music video, Don’t Cry Daddy, singing a duet with her father – her vocals overlaid on his original recording – to mark the 20th anniversary of his death. She signed a record deal with his producer David Foster and spent the next five years preparing her first album, To Whom It May Concern (2003), produced by Alanis Morissette’s producer Glenn Ballard. She wrote almost all the lyrics and co-wrote the music, detailing the personal sacrifice of her family and celebrity. It went to number 5 in the US charts, selling more than 500,000 copies, and the single, Lights Out, reached number 18 and 16 in the UK. A dark portrait of Graceland’s shadow, he also spoke to his father – “I still keep my clock back two hours,” the time difference between Memphis and LA.
Lisa Marie Presley and Michael Jackson arrive at the Budapest airport in 1994, a few months after their marriage. Photo: AFP/Getty Images
By then, on the 25th anniversary of her father’s death in August 2002, she had married actor Nicolas Cage, who in the 1992 film Honeymoon in Vegas joined the flying Elvis impersonators in the jumps with a parachute. Their honeymoon was short; Cage filed for divorce in November. Lisa Marie said that Cage considered her another piece of Elvis memorabilia.
Her second album, Now What (2005), reached number 9 in the charts and her cover of Don Henley’s Dirty Laundry became a hit single. In 2006, she starred in another hit video, a celebrity-studded cover of the classic God’s Gonna Cut You Down (which her father had recorded as Run On), made into a black and white version of Johnny Cash’s 2003 performance.
Lisa Marie Presley and Nicolas Cage in Los Angeles; after their brief marriage, she said Cage thought of her as another piece of Elvis memorabilia. Photo: Rex/Shutterstock
That year she married Michael Lockwood, the guitarist in her band, with Keough as best man. In 2010, they moved to an estate in Rotherfield, East Sussex, not far from the headquarters of the Church of Scientology. In 2012, she released a third album, Storm and Grace, a laid back, more country album produced by T Bone Burnett and reminiscent of Cash’s darker later work.
She and Lockwood had twin daughters, but announced they were divorcing in 2016. Her divorce papers claimed she was $16 million in debt, even though in 2004 she had sold 85% of the Elvis Presley Trust, keeping Graceland and its content. In 2018, she filed a $100 million lawsuit against her former business manager, Barry Siegel; and also sang another duet with his father, on the title track of Where No One Stands Alone, a compilation of Elvis’ gospel recordings.
When her first album was released, Lisa Marie said, “I didn’t want to do anything just based on who I was. I was doing this because my heart is in it. That’s what I’m good at. I’m good at introducing myself in a song. That’s it.” In 2020, her son Benjamin committed suicide at her house in Calabasas, outside Los Angeles. She largely withdrew from public life, as if nothing more could be made public.
But in the week before her death, she traveled to Graceland to celebrate her father’s 88th birthday, and then attended the Golden Globes in Los Angeles with her mother, where Austin Butler won Best Actor actor for the role of her father in the Baz Luhrmann film Elvis.
She is survived by her mother and three daughters, Riley from her first marriage and Harper and Finley from her fourth.
Lisa Marie Presley, singer and songwriter, born 1 February 1968; died January 12, 2023
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