Tragedy has haunted Lisa Marie Presley almost from the cradle, despite being the only heir to the king of rock, Elvis, and have enjoyed a life of fame and luxury. Precisely, two days before her death, this Thursday, at the age of 54, after being hospitalized due to cardiac arrest at her home in Calabasas (California), Lisa Marie attended with her mother, Priscilla Presley –of which Sofia Coppola is preparing a ‘biopic’-to the Golden Globes ceremony, as actor’s companions Austin Butlerwho won the award for best actor in a drama for his role as Elvis Presley in the Baz Luhrmann film.
That day he was no longer well. There’s a video of her on the red carpet what, today makes the hair stand on endbecause it looks unstable, hesitant and trying hard to keep his composure before the journalist who asks him some questions. She looks very fragile, and at one point she grabs the arm of her companion, to not fall.
It is unknown if he was already feeling bad on Tuesday, but what is certain is that Lisa has suffered a lot in these last two years.. In 2020 he suffered a terrible loss: the second of her four children committed suicide. Presley expressed his grief in a moving essay last August, where he described how he “had been living in the horrible reality of his relentless grip ever since my son died.” Benjamin Keough was 27 years old when he took his own life.
“This is not a comfortable subject for anyone, and it is very unpopular to talk about it. But if we are going to make any progress on the subject, grief must be talked about,” he wrote on Instagram.
Last visit to Graceland
It has also transpired that, like every January 8, Elvis’s birthday, Lisa Marie visited Graceland last Sundaythe mansion where his father lived.
Lisa Presley was born on February 1, 1968, when Elvis was at the top; and just 9 months after the marriage of her parents. The marriage was dissolved when the girl was only 4 years old.
During the following years, Lisa Marie Presley experienced a series of events that marked her life, in the midst of a maelstrom of fame, money and his search to find his place in the musical field. “I have dealt with death, pain and loss since I was 9 years old,” he wrote in a text for ‘People’ magazine.
Career overshadowed by fame
His life, documented from his own birth, has always been marked by its legendary last name. But through it all, she tried to carve her own niche in show business and pursue her own career in the music business. She published three albums. The first, ‘To Whom it May Concern’, in 2003; ‘Now What’, in 2005, and ‘Storm & Grace’, in 2012. She hasn’t released any albums for more than a decade.
failed marriages
Her personal life and the fame that pursued her since she was little were not helpful in her career. And it is that Elvis’s daughter came to star in up to four of the most mediatic marriages of recent decades. It almost seemed like it was sung that the king of rock’s daughter had to marry the king of pop, michael jackson. The (strange) couple was one of the most persecuted and photographed of the 90s.
They were married in 1994. It had only been 20 days since he had divorced her first husband, musician Danny Keoughwith whom she had her first two children, the current model, filmmaker and actress of ‘The Girlfriend Experience’, Riley Keoughand Benjamin Keough, who was a singer.
Presley had met Michael Jackson at age 7, when he attended several of his shows in Las Vegas. But they became friends in 1992. With the first accusations of child abuse that came to light, the singer became dependent on his relationship with Elvis’s daughter. “I thought he had done nothing wrong and that he was accused unfairly and, yes, I started to fall in love with him. I wanted to save him,” he said. But she could not save him either from the courts or from barbiturates, and they divorced in 1996.
With the turn of the millennium, her wedding would come with Nicolas Cage, with express divorce included, since they lasted only three months. From her last union, with the music producer Michael Lockwoodshe had her twins Harper Vivienne Ann and Finley Aaron Love, who are 14 years old today. In 2016, Lisa filed for divorce, which she obtained in 2021.
Marked by father’s death
He was only 9 years old when his father died of a myocardial infarction. Elvis weighed 130 kilos and suffered from various degenerative diseases and had multiple addictions. The artist’s mother, Gladys, also died very young, at 46 years old. That’s why Lisa was always obsessed with that idea. In several interviews she recounted the moment of her father’s death. She was at the famous Graceland mansion and she remembers that he kissed her goodnight shortly before she died. She in ‘Rolling Stone’ she explained in 2003: “She had a feeling. He wasn’t right. She was obsessed with death at a very young age.”
She also inherited a very particular ‘Old Hollywood’ aesthetic from her father: a bouffant hairstyle (which also distinguished her mother), thin eyebrows and red lips. She liked to wear black and often leather. Annie Leibovitz immortalized the three generations of the saga in a mythical cover of ‘Vogue’ USA August 2004: Priscilla, Lisa Marie y Riley.
alcohol and opioids
Like Elvis, she also abused alcohol and drugs from a very young age. Priscilla tried to help her by sending her to various private schools and even a boarding school. “You can read this and wonder how, after losing people close to me, I also fell prey to opioids,” she confessed in the book ‘The United States of Opioids’ in 2019.
He also got carried away by the controversial Scientology, although it is true that he had philanthropic moments and raised a foundation with his father’s name and promoting access to musical education.
Priscilla, who at 77 has outlived Elvis, his daughter and his grandsonhas thus remembered Lisa Marie Presley: “She was the most passionate, strong and affectionate woman I have ever known.”