Lisa Marie joins Elvis in the graveyard at Graceland
As Fergie reads out tribute to her ‘extraordinary’ friend at service...
LISA Marie Presley was laid to rest between her father Elvis and son Benjamin yesterday as Graceland gained another monument to a family member who died tragically young.
Elvis’s only child, 54, was accorded full rock ’n’ roll honours as music stars performed songs and the Duchess of York paid tribute at the service.
Ms Presley, who died this month after reportedly suffering a cardiac arrest, had predicted she would end up in the back garden of her father’s Tennessee mansion which has become a family graveyard on show to the paying public.
The singer’s grey marble sarcophagus sits next to an almost identical one belonging to Benjamin, 27, who died by suicide in 2020. She is separated by an ornamental fountain from the grave of Elvis, who was 42 when he died of a heart attack in 1977.
Thousands of Presley fans gathered outside Graceland for the chance to file past her grave and some members of the public were invited to join family and friends at a memorial service which followed a private funeral.
Stars who performed included Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose, the Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan and singer Alanis Morissette.
Elvis’s ex-wife Priscilla, 77, led tributes. Speaking from a stage in front of the Graceland mansion, she quoted from a poem by one of Lisa Marie’s three daughters.
The poem described her as ‘an icon, a role model and a superhero’ who ‘ always knew she wouldn’t be here too long’ and whose heart had been broken by her son’s death.
Speaking for herself, Priscilla added: ‘Our heart is broken, Lisa. We will always love you.’
A eulogy from Ms Keough to ‘the most loving mother I’ve ever known’ was read by her husband stuntman Ben Smith-Petersen – apparently because she was too overcome with emotion to deliver it herself. She revealed that Ms Presley had become a grandmother shortly before she died, saying. ‘I hope I can love my daughter the way you loved me, the way you loved my brother and my sisters.’
The Duchess of York, 63, also paid a heartfelt tribute, including to Lisa Marie’s three children, Riley Keough, 33, and 14-year-old twins Finley and Harper Lockwood. She and Ms Presley first met in 2007 and the singer reportedly attended Fergie’s 50th birthday celebrations in London two years later.
They grew even closer when the American moved to East Sussex in 2010 for six years, buying a 15thcentury manor house close to the UK headquarters of the Church of Scientology, of which Ms Presley was a member.
The duchess said: ‘ We need to stoke our flames within to celebrate extraordinary Lisa Marie.’ She revealed that she and Ms Presley affectionately called each other ‘ Sissie’. Addressing the twins, she said: ‘I’ve been here with you... for all your lives and I stand here with great honour. So Sissie, this is for you with affection.’ She added an anecdote about the Queen, saying: ‘My late mother-in-law used to say that “Nothing can be said, can begin to take away the anguish and the pain of these moments because grief is the price we pay for love” – and how right she was.’
Referring to Benjamin’s death, she said: ‘Mothers losing children, there are no words for it.’
Jerry Schilling, the agent of Ms Presley and Elvis, remembered her as ‘the only person I knew who could intimidate Jerry Lee Lewis’, once asking the rock ’n’ roll wild man about reports he had angrily crashed his car into Graceland’s front gates. He said: ‘It was the only time I’d see Jerry Lee Lewis speechless and nervous.’
Axl Rose said the death of Benjamin took his friend’s life ‘down a hard road’. She was also at home – just nine years old – when Elvis died suddenly. Ms Presley’s four husbands included pop superstar Michael Jackson and Hollywood actor Nicolas Cage.
She struggled with opioid addiction following the birth of her twin daughters in 2008. She had tried to make light of her rollercoaster life and the Presley legacy, once joking that she knew she would end up buried at Graceland.
She suggested she might ‘shrink my head and put it in a glass box in the living room – I’ll get more tourists to Graceland that way’.
Pastor Dwayne Hunt, who described Graceland as the ‘forever home’ of the Presleys, said she had told friends not to make her passing sad. Yesterday, however, that proved impossible.
‘Our heart is broken’