LISA MARIE PRESLEY

LISA MARIE SPEAKS ON HER DADDY

There are many things about my father, Elvis Presley, that so many others and I can admire eternally. He rose from humble beginnings and when the realization of his dreams and aspirations exceeded all that he had imagined, it gave others hope - a new awareness of their own potential, whatever challenges they might be facing in life. With his success came the accolades and respect he deserved. However, the fame also brought with it a harsh kind of scrutiny and judgment that no one should ever have to experience. The truth of his artistry and his character always rose above this. It always will. His place in our musical and cultural history, and in so many hearts, will always be secure.

One of the very special aspects of Elvis Presley's character was his generosity of spirit. He expressed it with benefit concerts and charitable donations that were well known by the public. But most of what he did for others was done quietly, without publicity. My father never once forgot what it was like to want, to need, to do without. He spent most of his life bringing happiness to others, endlessly giving to those around him. It is one of the things that I admire most about him.

THE DUET

On August 16, 1997, marking the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the passing of Elvis Presley, Elvis Presley Enterprises and SEG Events presented Elvis in Concert '97 to a sell-out crowd at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis, Tennessee. It featured a great gathering of many of the outstanding instrumentalists and vocalists who had worked on stage and in the recording studio with Elvis over the years. The late Elvis Presley, via video, starred in the show. His former band members and The Memphis Symphony Orchestra performed live. This production more or less became the prototype for Elvis-The Concert, a smaller-scaled production that has toured extensively since early 1998. A major reunion concert on the scale of the 1997 show was called Elvis-The 25th Anniversary Concert, a sold-out smash at The Pyramid arena in Memphis on August 16, 2002.

And the highlight of the show was Lisa Marie singing "Don't Cry Daddy" with Elvis. It brought thunderous applause and many say there wasn't a dry eye in the coliseum.

ELVIS' DAUGHTER

Suspicious minds are wrong to think Elvis' girl is cashing in.

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 ($US) 300million, 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 behaviour. 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 recognised as such, then I feel a little more justified as a human, you know."

By: Michael Bracewell~June 22, 2003~

LISA MARIE'S CAREER

This is Me...Press Release; Capitol Records, 2003

"This is me. This record is me. Every song is me. You're going to see who I really am and not what the tabloids say or whatever anyone has to say about me."

That's quite a statement for any artist to make, especially on the eve of the release of just her debut album. But when the artist is Lisa Marie Presley, the normal rules don't apply. Her life has been held up to public scrutiny since day one. "There was press there the day I was born," she says. Indeed, from being the daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, through her role as chairman of the board of Elvis Presley Enterprises and through high-profile romantic involvements, she's been a very visible figure her entire life.

And yet, other than tabloid sensationalism, what do you really know about her? Through it all, she has managed to maintain a very guarded privacy, rarely giving interviews, rarely revealing her true self. That all changes with the release of To Whom It May Concern, which marks the emergence of the real Lisa Marie Presley -- and the emergence of a new, strong voice in the pop music world, both literally and figuratively.

The singing hits you first: confident and rich, rock solid with a distinctive sense of individuality. Then there's the music: powerful and personable, steering clear of cliches while burrowing into your consciousness. And then the lyrics strike: Written entirely by Presley, they're forthright and frank, pulling no punches. Songs run from the brutal self-analysis of "S.O.B." with its sinewy rock imprint, to the broken-hearted loss of "Nobody Noticed It," from the forceful cry for an end to prescribed drugging of children in "To Whom It May Concern" to her unbridled love for her own children in "So Lovely." And in the dusky textures of "Lights Out," she hauntedly confronts the dark side of her heritage: "Someone turned the lights out there in Memphis, That's where my family's buried and gone, Last time I was there I noticed a space left Next to them there in Memphis in the damn back lawn." "I never wanted to write a song, ever, about anything indicating my genetic code whatsoever, or my background," she says. "But if I had to do it, then 'Lights Out' would be that song. It's kind of a darker, odd take on it. It's not like, 'Woo! I'm from Memphis and look at my life and it's so wonderful.'"

Musically, the album bears a distinctive rock edge, crafted by primary producer Eric Rosse (who produced Tori Amos' first two albums) and on "Lights Out" by Andrew Slater (producer of Fiona Apple, Macy Gray and the Wallflowers, and Capitol Records president since 2001). Also evident are the stamps of songwriter-musician Danny Keough (Presley's first husband).

"Danny's my best friend in the world and we write all the time," she says. "And he's a huge part of why I'm singing and writing, so I wasn't going to have him not be part of this record. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be writing or singing."

Though music was a constant positive in her life for as long as she can remember, Presley never even sang in front another person until she was 20. Once she did, though, songs flooded from her. But it was still a decade before she had something worth taking public. "When I had gone through enough shit in my life where I felt like I needed an outlet and I was just going to let it go and let people know who I was through that, then it was the right time," she says. She found herself in intense training to learn how to write and record. Songs were written and rewritten, recorded and re-recorded. The arrival of Slater at Capitol and the hiring of Rosse to oversee the project kicked the album into gear.

"By the time I met Eric I was mean ­ 'I don't care what you think! I don't want to talk to you!'" she recalls. "But he was really patient with me and he understood that the songs had been done and redone for four years and I was ready to throw my middle finger up at everybody at that point. And then he started doing things that were really cool, and I was, 'Oh, We're actually going to be on the same page.' We wrote "Indifferent" and I was, 'Okay, let's give this vibe to the rest of the record.'"

Slater, too, worked hard to help Presley make not just an album, but a personal statement.

"When I got with Andy, he didn't push me in any particular pop direction," she says. "He just wanted it to be cool and he wanted the credit, which is what I wanted.'"

That this startling emergence came at this point in her life is no accident. She'd had many opportunities to make records before. She was offered her first record deal while a teenager, a time at which she hadn't ever even sung in front of another person, let alone in public. "I didn't want to do anything just based on who I am," she says. "I mean, I was asked to do a bloody movie with Vanilla Ice! The stuff I've been offered in my life is insane and I didn't do any of it because I didn't care. I was doing this because my heart's in this. This is what I'm good at doing. I'm good at putting myself in a song. That's it.

Lisa Marie As A Child

Christmas With Daddy

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