IMAGE: Lisa Marie Presley at the Golden Globes on Tuesday, January 10, 2023. Photograph: Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for Icelandic Glacial
Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis Aaron Presley’ only child and a dedicated keeper of her father’s legacy, died on January 12, after being hospitalised for a medical emergency. She was 54.
Presley’s death was confirmed by her mother Priscilla.
‘It is with a heavy heart that I must share the devastating news that my beautiful daughter Lisa Marie has left us,’ Priscilla Presley said in a statement. ‘She was the most passionate, strong and loving woman I have ever known.’
Presley shared her father’s brooding charisma — the hooded eyes, the insolent smile, the low, sultry voice — and followed him professionally, releasing her own rock albums in the 2000s, and appearing on stage with Pat Benata and Richard Hawley among others.
She even formed direct musical ties with her father, joining her voice to such Elvis recordings as In the Ghetto and Don’t Cry Daddy, a mournful ballad which had reminded him of the early death of his mother (and Lisa Marie’s grandmother) Gladys Presley.
‘It’s been all my life,’ she told Associated Press in 2012, speaking of her father’s influence.
‘It’s not something that I now listen to and it’s different. Although I might listen closer. I remain consistent on the fact that I’ve always been an admirer. He’s always influenced me.’
IMAGE: Steve Binder, Baz Luhrmann, Austin Butler, Harper Vivienne Ann Lockwood, Lisa Marie Presley, Priscilla Presley, Riley Keough and Finley Aaron Love Lockwood at the Handprint Ceremony honoring Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough at TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, June 21, 2022. Photograph: Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images
Her birth, nine months after her parents’ wedding, was international news and her background was rarely far from her mind.
With the release last year of Baz Luhrmann’s major musical feature Elvis, Lisa Marie and Priscilla Presley had been attending red carpets and award shows alongside stars from the film.
She was at the Golden Globes on Tuesday, January 10, 2023, on hand to celebrate Austin Butler’s award for playing her father.
Just days before, she was in Memphis at Graceland, the mansion where Elvis lived and died on January 8, to celebrate her father’s 88th birth anniversary.
IMAGE: Elvis Presley, 33, and his wife Priscilla, 22, leave the Baptist Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, a day after their baby daughter Lisa-Marie was born at the hospital on February 1, 1968. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images
Presley lived with her mother, an actor known for Dallas and the Naked Gun
She recalled early memories of her dad during her visits to Graceland, riding golf carts through the neighbourhood and seeing his daily entrances down the stairs.
‘He was always fully, fully geared up. You’d never see him in his pajamas coming down the steps, ever,’ she told Associated Press in 2012. ‘You’d never see him in anything but ‘ready to be seen’ attire.’
Elvis died in August 1977, when he was just 42, and she 9 years old.
Lisa Marie was staying at Graceland at the time and would recall him kissing her goodnight hours before he would collapse and never recover. When she next saw him, the following day, he was lying face down in the bathroom.
‘I just had a feeling,’ she told Rolling Stone in 2003. ‘He wasn’t doing well. All I know is I had it (a feeling), and it happened. I was obsessed with death at a very early age.’
IMAGE: Brett Livingston Strong, right, with his son, Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley in August 1994. Photograph: Getty Images
She would later make headlines of her own.
Struggles with drugs and some very public marriages. Her four husbands included Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage.
Jackson and Presley were married in the Dominican Republic in 1994, but the marriage ended two years later and was defined by numerous awkward public appearances, including an unexpected kiss from Jackson during the MTV Video Music Awards and a joint interview with Diane Sawyer when she defended her husband against allegations he had sexually abused a minor.
Her other celebrity marriage was even shorter: Cage filed for divorce after four months of marriage in 2002.
