In the chamber of her childhood at Graceland, Lisa Marie Presley found solace in harmonizing with 45s on a diminutive phonograph. "My progenitor would apprehend me," she reminisced. "I am convinced he derived amusement from it. He would elevate me onto the coffee table before all and sundry and bid me vocalize."
Recollections of Lisa Marie's adoring progenitor, Elvis Presley, will tenderly embellish her memoir, scheduled for release on October 15. "Few were privy to my mother's veritable persona," elucidates Riley Keough, Lisa Marie's progeny and an actress, who refined the manuscript following her mother's abrupt demise at 54 last January.
"Lisa Marie had been toiling over her literary work for eons," discloses a confidante exclusively to Closer. The confidante denotes the narrative as "90 percent complete" when Riley, aged 34, assumed authorship. "Lisa Marie eschewed withholding anything."
The existence of Elvis and Priscilla Presley's solitary offspring aroused curiosity and conjecture from her inception in 1968. At times, it resonated akin to a myth. The indulgences Elvis showered upon Lisa Marie — encompassing a diamond band, a peltry garment, and an impromptu jaunt to Utah to frolic in her inaugural snowfall — have transcended into legend.
However, concealed within Graceland were other, less innocuous enigmas that Lisa Marie held her tongue about? One of her primary motivations for penning her memoir was to safeguard her father's legacy from the parasites who disseminated unsavory tales following his demise in 1977.
"They instilled dread in me during my youth," Lisa Marie reflected upon Elvis' so-called Memphis Mafia. "I recollect witnessing the debauchery, the narcotics, the women — I bore witness to it all, and I scrutinized them. I am acquainted with the authentic chronicle behind each of them."
She harbored the belief that her father's comrades precipitated his demise. "These imbeciles were repulsive — they facilitated his descent and were in fact more reprehensible than he," Lisa Marie seethed, augmenting that she was incensed by their treachery towards her progenitor. "They endeavored to denude him of his dignity," she articulated, "the quintessential facet to him."
Within her memoir, Lisa Marie refrains from mincing words regarding her intricate rapport with mother Priscilla, aged 78. "They quarreled frequently, diverged on myriad matters, but Lisa Marie perpetually cherished her," discloses the confidante, who further notes that Lisa Marie also proffered insights into her parents' bond. "She inscribes that her mother and father genuinely adored each other, that they were each other's soul mates. She believes her mother never encountered affection of that caliber anew."
Toward the nuptials with Danny Keough, Michael Jackson, Nicolas Cage, and Michael Lockwood, Lisa Marie maintains no reticence. "I am whimsical in my disposition. I succumb to the moment," conceded Lisa Marie regarding her perpetual conviction that she would eventually unearth genuine love.
"It is the sole sphere where my innocence prevails." Her intimacy with Danny, a relatively obscure musician whom she encountered in 1985 at the Church of Scientology Celebrity Center, likely approached closest to her ideal. They wed when Lisa Marie was 20, begetting daughter Riley in 1989 and son Benjamin in 1992. She ascribed the dissolution of their union to her celebrity status.
"[Danny] was eclipsed, entombed alive by my sheer existence, and he harbored resentment," divulged Lisa Marie concerning the spouse who persisted as her "closest confidant" even after she parted ways with him for Michael Jackson.
A few revelations concerning her union with the King of Pop, spanning from 1994 to 1996, are embedded in the memoir as well. Lisa Marie divulged that Michael aspired to progeny with her. "I extricated myself from that predicament," disclosed the vocalist, who admitted she harbored the belief that she could rescue Michael. "She genuinely adored him," augments the confidante.
The 2020 suicide of Benjamin, Lisa Marie's 27-year-old progeny, undoubtedly constituted the most arduous segment to chronicle. "I am perpetually engaged in a battle with myself, perpetually reproaching and tormenting myself each passing day," she inscribed.
"Others will cast judgment and reproach upon you as well, perchance clandestinely or surreptitiously, which compounds the cruelty and agony atop everything else."
Recounting the tragedy was exceedingly distressing for Lisa Marie. "The loss of Benjamin nearly extinguished her," the confidante affirms. "She harbored no fondness for resurrecting her past. Reliving these episodes was daunting, yet simultaneously remarkably cathartic."
It is plausible that Lisa Marie would derive satisfaction from finally being accorded the liberty to narrate her life saga in her own terms. "I am averse to self-referential discourse," she articulated, appending that it was a Herculean task to expunge the decades of "speculation and sensationalist fodder" that have permeated literature concerning her family. "I never solicited the limelight, hence I harbor an aversion to it. Yet concurrently, I harbor no desire to repudiate any facet of my essence or lineage. I would never covet participation in anything divergent. I am proud and honored by my familial heritage and my progenitor."