Memphis, Tennessee, is mourning the death of Lisa Marie Presley, the only daughter of the “King of Rock ’n’ Roll,” Elvis. Her mother, Priscilla, confirmed her death Thursday night in a statement that read:
It is with a heavy heart that I must share the devastating news that my beautiful daughter Lisa Marie has left us. She was the most passionate, strong and loving woman I have ever known. We ask for privacy as we try to deal with this profound loss. Thank you for the love and prayers. At this time there will be no further comment.
Presley died on January 12, shortly after suffering cardiac arrest, media outlets report. She had been found unresponsive in her home in Calabasas, California, west of Los Angeles. Though emergency responders were able to revive her, she passed away after being hospitalized at the West Hills Hospital and Medical Center.
Presley would have celebrated her 55th birthday on February 1, and was heir to her father’s Memphis estate, Graceland. Fans are now flocking to the mansion, lining the sidewalk along Elvis Presley Boulevard with flowers and tributes.
Though funeral plans have not been announced, Lisa Marie will be laid to rest at Graceland, according to a spokesman for one of Presley’s daughters, actress Riley Keough, as quoted by the Associated Press.
She will be buried next to her father’s grave in the Meditation Garden on the south side of the mansion, the location of an annual candlelight vigil commemorating Elvis’ August 16, 1977 death. Thousands of fans attend every year.
Presley had foretold this as her final resting place in lyrics to the song “Lights Out” on her 2003 debut album, To Whom It May Concern: “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…”
Other members of the Presley family buried in this small graveyard include Elvis’ parents, his paternal grandmother, and Lisa Marie’s son, Benjamin Keough, who lost his life in 2020 to a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His death elicited this poignant statement from his grieving mother:
My beautiful, beautiful angel. I worshipped the ground you walked on, on this earth, and now in Heaven. My heart and soul went with you. The depth of the pain is suffocating and bottomless without you every moment of every day. I will never be the same.
The Birthday
Less than a week before her death, Lisa Marie and her family gathered with hundreds of fans at Graceland to celebrate what would have been her father’s 88th birthday on January 8. The home opened to public tours in 1982 and “generally attracts about 500,000 visitors a year,” reports the Memphis Commercial-Appeal. A spokesman for the estate said this year’s was the largest Elvis birthday crowd in history.
“It’s been a while. I missed you,” Presley said to the fans. “I keep saying you’re the only people that can bring me out of my house. I’m not kidding,” she vowed, as fans answered, “We love you, Lisa Marie!”
“I love you back, and that’s why I’m here. Today, [Elvis] would’ve been 88 years old. It’s hard to believe. I think that he’d be proud. This year has been an incredible year … but it’s just so moving how every year you come from all over the world. It’s moving to me and my family … so thank you.”
The Movie
Media credit Elvis’ 2023 birthday popularity to the 2022 release of Baz Luhrmann’s biographical motion picture Elvis, a movie that Lisa Marie publicly endorsed as authentic and a fitting tribute to her father.
After watching the premiere of the movie, she told Entertainment Tonight, “I really didn’t know what to do with myself after I saw it. I had to take, like, five days to process it because it was so incredible and so spot on and just so authentic that, yeah, I can’t even describe what it meant.”
“The [Elvis] movie is incredible,” she told fans on Elvis’ birthday at Graceland. “I’m very proud of it, and I hope you are, too.”
Two days before she died, Lisa Marie had attended the Golden Globes ceremony in Hollywood with her mother. Austin Butler won the Best Actor award for his lead role in the film, thanking the mother and daughter during his acceptance speech for their support. “I’ll love you forever,” he told them. News reports relate that Lisa Marie did not appear to feel well during the event, however, and friends said she had endured stomach pains throughout the day.
Her Life & Struggles
Fans worldwide are stricken by her sudden death, as she has been the closest living link to possibly the most famous man in the world, her father, who still has a huge following 46 years after he passed away. She was only 9 years old when he died.
Many devotees remember when she was born in Memphis in 1968, and they have watched her grow up, launch her own music career, and become a mother.
“I remember when Elvis bought that 707 jet and named it after her,” a Memphis native and longtime resident who was associated with the Presley family told The New American. “Every now and then we’d see it fly overhead, and someone would say, ‘There goes the Lisa Marie.’ To a 10-year-old boy, that was something special.”
Lisa Marie was only 5 years old when her parents divorced, and she spent her youth between California (where Priscilla moved to) and Graceland. In the 1990s she dabbled in Scientology, opening a center dedicated to its study in Memphis with musician Isaac Hayes. Her affiliation with that religion ended in 2014.
In 2018 she told NBC’s Today show that she had overcome a drug addiction of five years, and the same year she publicly revealed that her portion of her father’s inheritance, $100 million, was gone. She blamed a business partner for mismanagement of funds. However, she still oversaw the Elvis Presley Charitable Foundation to carry on her father’s legacy of generosity.
Her high-profile marriages to pop icon Michael Jackson in 1994 and actor Nicolas Cage in 2002 were flanked by a first marriage to Danny Keough in 1988 and final marriage to guitarist Michael Lockwood in 2006. She and Lockwood had twins, Harper and Finley, in 2008, but their divorce and custody battle waged between 2016 and 2021. After her son’s suicide in 2020 she became reclusive, but release of the biopic Elvis brought her back out into public light.
Reflecting on Benjamin’s death, she penned a 2020 remembrance published in People magazine: “Death is part of life whether we like it or not — and so is grieving.… Grief does not stop or go away in any sense, a year, or years after the loss. Grief is something you will have to carry with you for the rest of your life, in spite of what certain people or our culture wants us to believe. You do not ‘get over it,’ you do not ‘move on,’ period.”
