Suspicious Minds | Lisa Marie Presley

When Lisa Marie Presley was three, her father Elvis would stand her on a table and get her to sing for his guests. 'I had no aspirations to sing', she said 32 years later, 'but the desire to please him'.

Looking down in the middle of a slow, jet-lagged sentence, Lisa Marie widens her eyes as though to refocus. You see the unusually straight lines of her features, and when she looks up with the hint of a grin, her eyes acquire a lustre that appears both roguish and regal, in a lazy southern way.

And then you feel as if you're looking into the eyes of Elvis; that the voice and expressions have cohered in such a way as to ventriloquise his presence. In this instant, Lisa Marie becomes almost too unnervingly recognisable - too beautiful - to comprehend - how could the female Elvis be anything else?

As the King's sole heir Lisa Marie has inherited not simply the presidency and ultimate control of Elvis Presley Enterprises and a personal fortune of $US300million ($453million) but a name and a legend more potent, and more prompting of ravenous curiosity, than that of nearly any dynastic royalty.

After surviving teenage drug abuse, divorce (most publicly from Michael Jackson), poor health and depression, Presley decided to make a record. A big task for any woman and mother in her 30s. But as Elvis Presley's daughter, almost asking for trouble.

'I'm female, thank God, because if I was male this really would be difficult', she said. 'I don't attempt to sound like my father, I do my own thing. Those comparisons are something I was intimidated by for a very long time. But I had to go with it. Music is a huge part of my life and I had to park all that fear and not let it stop something that was important to me'.

It hasn't set the charts on fire in the US or Australia but To Whom It May Concern is a surprisingly solid piece of work: sultry, guitar-driven rock, tinged with filmic electronic effects, over which she projects her frequently dark and confrontational lyrics with the growling passion of an apprentice Patti Smith.

Lisa Marie is keen to address the musical yearnings she has had for at least a decade. 'I'd been writing since I was 22, just sort of for cathartic reasons. But I hit a point in my life where I needed a record to outlet things. I didn't want to do it in some flash-in-the-pan way or novelty way; I waited until I actually felt really passionate about doing it'.

A personal thing, but public, too. No one had been famous on the scale or in the way that her father had become famous. For his only child there could never be any chance of even a halfway-normal childhood.

Lisa Marie was born in 1968, and her parents divorced when she was four. For the remaining five years of her father's short life her time was divided between her mother's house in Los Angeles - where there was a certain amount of household discipline - and Graceland, where her every whim was indulged and she could hold despotic sway over the estate workers, just like a real princess.

Lisa Marie admits to being a spoiled child, given at times to tyrannical behavior. She was nine when Elvis died, and present at his death. By the time she was 14, Lisa Marie was using drugs herself. 'I'd probably have ended up in jail', she said when asked how her life might have turned out. 'I dropped out of school in the 11th grade because there was no purpose in it for me. I'm not proud of this, and I'm not trying to promote it. I felt I needed a foundation early on, which is why I had kids so early.

'I knew I would be like an unconducted energy blast that would end up God knows where if I didn't plant myself in that particular situation'.

Lisa Marie is aware that people might easily write her off as just playing at being in a band for a couple of years. But in an irony that reverses the usual procedures of pop celebrity, it is precisely to transcend her fame and money that she is pursuing her musical career with such determination.

'I did a record because music has had such a huge impact on me all my life, and my hope was to affect others musically the way I was affected', she said. 'So, if I put out something that is actually credible, and recognized as such, then I feel a little more justified as a human, you know'.

Lisa Marie Presley's next single Sinking In will be released in Australia next month. Her album is available nationally through EMI.

Sun-Herald June 16, 2003.

Lisa Marie Presley

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Complete Lisa Marie Presley Playboy Interview
Lisa Marie and Elvis Presley duet of In The Ghetto
Lisa Marie's Twin Girls | Finley & Harper
The Presley Women | Priscilla & Lisa Marie Presley
Rolling Stone Interview with Lisa Marie Presley
I Love You Because | Lisa Marie and Elvis Duet at the 35th Anniversary Concert
Lisa Marie and Elvis Presley Duet | I Love You Because
Interview | Lisa Marie Presley Sees Her Father's Spirit in Her Kids
Lisa Marie sells Elvis rights for $100m
Lisa Marie Presley In Concert Australia (2004)
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Elvis Presleys Grandchildren

Danielle Riley Keough | known as Riley Keough for her modeling work.
Benjamin Keough | Lisa's Son | Elvis Presleys Grandson

Celebs : The Next Generation
Elvis lives on ... in the form of his grandaughter, Riley Keough
Beautiful Photos of Riley Keough, Elvis' Granddaughter in Elle Italia

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