Even after losing Elvis, her heart never healed. That was always evident as Lisa Marie Presley awkwardly searched for love and contentment in her short life.
But Presley’s graphic new memoir, “From Here to the Great Unknown” (Random House, 281 pages, on sale Tuesday), was written by Lisa Marie’s daughter Riley Keough after her death at age 54. And the tragedy is being amplified and repeated. It’s a compelling but unrelentingly depressing read.
The book is a transcribed tape of Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s only child openly discussing their lives, and is illustrated with alternating mother and daughter voices. Roughly a third of the book focuses on Lisa Marie’s childhood, detailing her rocky relationship with her mother, with and without her father, and a significant portion of her relationship with Michael Jackson. is devoted to.
There are large gaps in the timeline, most notably Nicolas Cage’s marriage to Michael Lockwood, but they are subtly filled in by Keogh, who plays Lisa Marie’s eventual addiction and It also provides insight into the subsequent suicide of his son Ben Keogh. Although her love of music is clear, surprisingly little is said about her career.
Some of the book’s biggest revelations include:
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How to watch: Oprah interviews Elvis’ granddaughter Riley Keough on CBS
Long before Elvis’ death, Lisa Marie Presley was worried that Elvis would die.
“I wrote a poem called “I Wish Daddy Wouldn’t Die,”” she recalls. Among many other incidents, she described finding him face down on the bathroom floor. He tried to support himself on the towel rack, but the towel rack broke and he fell down.
The last time she saw Elvis alive was while he was playing racquetball. Her father gave her a hug and a kiss, said, “I love you,” and told her, “Go to bed.”
She awoke to a commotion and Elvis was carried away on a stretcher. Nine-year-old Lisa Marie went to her bedroom, nervously smoked a cigarette and waited for words. An hour later, she heard her grandfather Vernon crying, “He’s gone, he’s gone.”
“My life as I knew it was completely over,” she wrote, before realizing, “He’s dead and I’m now stuck with her, meaning Priscilla.”
Keogh added, “I remember when I was young, leaving my mother and feeling angry at Elvis for causing me such pain.”
Lisa Marie claims Priscilla Presley’s boyfriend sexually assaulted her over many years
Lisa Marie said that when she was 10 years old, her mother’s boyfriend, model and actor Michael Edwards, came to her room in the middle of the night. “He said he was going to teach me what was going to happen when I grew up,” she says in the book. “He put his hand on my chest and said he’s going to touch me here. Then he put his hand between my legs and said he’s going to touch me here.” She said he gently touched her. I remember kissing him and walking away.
When Lisa Marie revealed the incident, Priscilla became furious and called for her daughter so Edwards could apologize. “That’s what we teach kids in Europe, so I did it too,” he told her.
But the abuse didn’t stop. “He touched me, hit me and told me not to look at me,” and left bruises on her butt. “I think he was masturbating,” Lisa Marie said. When Priscilla confronted him, “he said things like, ‘Oh, I was drunk,’ and ‘She was actually flirting with me.'”
“I was 11, 12, 13 years old,” says Lisa Marie.
Once, when he complained that Lisa Marie had left her underwear in the dryer, she retorted, “It’s not like I don’t enjoy it.” She said the man threw a dining room chair at her and hit her in the back.
USA TODAY has reached out to Priscilla Presley’s representatives for comment. No contact information for Edwards could be found.
Priscilla transferred teenage Lisa Marie to Scientology Celebrity Center
Lisa Marie, whose relationship had soured, remembers the relief she felt when Priscilla asked her to pack her things in the middle of the night and dropped her off.
“The first morning I took the big mirror off the wall, called my Coke dealer and invited him and about six or seven other people over to my house,” she said in her memoir. “We spent four days in captivity in that room.”
But for the most part, she says, “Scientology actually helped.” “The church felt radical in an exciting way. It didn’t really feel like an organized religion. It attracted cool, unusual, artistic people. It became my tribe. Ta.”
Shocked after aborting Danny Keogh’s child, Lisa Marie intentionally impregnated Riley Keogh
She called the abortion “the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” and the couple broke up soon after.
So, “I planned, planned, planned. I pinpointed when I was ovulating.” And then I met Danny on a cruise ship when his band was playing a show. Two weeks later, a pregnancy test came back positive, and “Danny knew he had to marry me. I set him up. I didn’t really mean it, but… I did it.”
Michael Jackson told Lisa Marie Presley he was a virgin
He has chastely kissed Tatum O’Neal and Brooke Shields, and “Madonna once tried to have an affair with him, but nothing happened,” says Lisa Marie.
“I was scared because I didn’t want to do anything wrong. When he decided to kiss me for the first time, he just did it. He was instigating everything. Something physical happened. When I first started, I was shocked by it. I thought, “I might not do anything until we get married,” but he said, “I’m not waiting!”
Lisa Marie recalls their early days together as idyllic. We honeymooned in Orlando and went to Disney World every other day. “I was actually very happy,” she says. “I have never been so happy again.”
“There was an energy there, something about him that was just amazing, that I had never seen or felt in my life outside of my dad. That’s why I fell in love with him.”
What about the child sexual abuse allegations? “I’ve never seen anything that bad. If he had, I personally would have killed him.”
Grieving Lisa Marie kept her son Ben Keogh’s body on dry ice at home for several months.
She took Ben home after he committed suicide in 2020. “I got very used to taking care of him and keeping him there” in the 55-degree room, she said.
Lisa Marie and Keogh decided to get Ben’s name tattooed on their collarbones and hands, just as Ben had them tattooed. When the artist asked if there were any photos showing the location of the ink, Keogh was surprised by what happened next.
“I’ve lived a very absurd life, but this moment ranks in my top five,” Keogh wrote. Lisa Marie ushered the artist inside, opened Ben’s casket and inspected his tattoo firsthand.
“Soon thereafter, my brother gave all of us the feeling that he no longer wanted to be in this house,” Keogh wrote. “‘Hey,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘this is getting weird.’
Ben Keogh once drove Lisa Marie across the country during a health crisis so she could take drugs along the way
Lisa Marie’s drug addiction, which began after the birth of her twin girls in 2008, was at its worst when she was taking 80 pills a day.
“It felt like my whole life was blown away, one thing after another, and I couldn’t take any more assaults,” she wrote in her memoir.
She frequently traveled to Graceland to sleep in Elvis’ bed, Keough wrote. She said she was “desperate to feel protected, desperate to connect with my father. … It’s like when you’ve lost everything you go to church and say, ‘Jesus, help me.’ It was.”
As his health deteriorated, Ben rented a tour bus in Nashville and took Lisa Marie and the twins to Los Angeles to see a doctor. “We drove because I had always wanted to do cocaine, but I couldn’t do it on a plane,” she says. “I didn’t think I would even be able to get through airport security.”
During her rehabilitation, Lisa Marie underwent bariatric surgery to lose weight and ultimately died from a small bowel obstruction.
Two weeks before his suicide, Ben texted Lisa Marie that his mental state was deteriorating.
“I think there’s something wrong with you mentally, or something like that,” Ben told her. “I think I have a mental health problem.”
Numbed by drink and drugs, he didn’t realize the depth of his depression until it was too late, Keogh writes. “He had never been to therapy, and he certainly had never attempted suicide before — not an overdose or anything. Don’t scream for help.”
Somehow Lisa Marie remained sober, Keogh writes, even though “everyone knew her mother would die of a broken heart.”
This article discusses suicide and sexual assault. If you or someone you know is in trouble or in crisis, you need help. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
If you are a victim of sexual assault, RAINN offers support through the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE and online.rainn.org.