Lisa Marie Presley
THE KING’S DAUGHTER SHARES MEMORIES OF GROWING UP AT GRACELAND WITH HER LEGENDARY DAD
Elvis’ daughter recalls heartwarming memories of her music-icon dad.
Lisa Marie Presley remembers running wild at Graceland. She ate dessert for breakfast, stayed up late and raced around in her own golf cart. “I was awful,” admits Elvis Presley’s only child. “There was no schedule with my father. No rules.”
Despite her close relationship with Elvis, who died when she was 9, Lisa Marie, 51, has rarely shared her memories. That’s about to change. She recently sold her first memoir to Gallery Books, which reportedly paid between $3 million and $4 million for the rights. “Lisa Marie loved her dad,” says an insider. “This is her time to finally open up about him.”
ALWAYS ON MY MIND
After Priscilla Presley and Elvis divorced in 1973, Lisa Marie began spending weekends at Graceland. “[Elvis] was a very exciting dad,” she recalls of the music icon, who dressed her in fur coats and jewels and flew her to Colorado to play in the snow. “He’d always wake me up to sing in the middle of the night,” she remembers. “Graceland was like this fun house that no matter what you did, no matter what you broke… it would somehow miraculously get replaced within 24 hours. It was quite the lively home.”
And it was nothing like life with Priscilla.
“My mom made me go to school, do my homework. I hated it,” says Lisa Marie, whose rebellious streak grew worse after Elvis died in 1977. “Dad was always my friend, and I wanted Mom to be my friend, too. Now I realize I needed someone to say, ‘No!’ ”
In her book, the four-time divorcée also promises to disclose secrets from her marriage to Michael Jackson who, like Elvis, existed in an isolated bubble. “You get into this world where nothing you do is wrong,” she says. “[My father] was one of the first ones to go through it. It was very lonely there. I know that.”
“He was very adoring. I knew that I was loved.”
— Lisa Marie, on Elvis