Lisa Marie Presley

Personal Tragedy in the Public Eye

by Erica MacDonald | Design by Emma Hill

Lisa Marie Presley: daughter of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, musician in her own right, philanthropist, and the eponym of one of the first privately-owned celebrity jets. Her name deals in legend and legacy. Born the closest thing to American royalty, Lisa Marie was never afforded anonymity nor the bliss of the mundane—heavy is the head that wears the crown.

It may seem impossible to think of father and daughter in their own, separate rights. Elvis is a global, multigenerational household name; he is one of the most famous people to ever live.

The Presley’s family home, Graceland, has been meticulously preserved and spawned a modern pop-culture Disneyland across the road. Devoted fans, tourists, and local Memphians can see everything from Elvis’s stables, to his army fatigues, to his final resting place in the meditation garden. Likewise, Lisa Marie’s entire life has been memorialized—her early years turned to placards on the walls of Graceland, her career and philanthropy advertised in exhibits, and her personal tragedies followed at less-than-arm’s-length by the media. In January of 2023, Lisa Marie tragically died from cardiac arrest. She had just attended the Golden Globes to celebrate the Elvis movie, and was present at Graceland for the commemoration of what would have been her father’s 88th birthday. Although her family had never disappeared from the limelight, in the months preceding her death they were headlining with a higher frequency than they had in years.

With the Baz Luhrmann film a hit with critics, audiences, and tiktok users trolling for AustinButler-accent content, the Presleys were fresh in everyone’s mind. Which meant the blow fell all the harder on the adoring public when Lisa Marie died at a mere 54 years of age.

Lisa Marie’s life was too often waylaid by loss. Before she was ten, her father died—sending her family and the world into mourning. Such immense grief often has nowhere to go, and when it’s paired with celebrity, it can mean a lifetime of headlines, memorials, re-released tracks, collector’s editions, and public anniversaries. For the family, and Lisa Marie the sole heir of her father’s property and fifteen percent of Elvis Presley Enterprises, there was no reprieve from the fame and the name. It’s no surprise that Elvis has the most gold records of any artist (101) or that he’s in multiple music halls of fame, but his honors supersede the music industry—he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018. Both things are true: Elvis died too young, and Elvis is immortal. Both things are true: Lisa Marie lost a father, and the world lost a music idol.

Lisa Marie was married four times and had four children, two by Daniel Keough (her daughter Riley and her son Ben), and twins by Michael Lockwood (Harper and Finley). Her second marriage was to pop icon Michael Jackson, and when her ex-husband passed in 2009, Presley was gutted. Her love for him survived their divorce, even though the drugs and doctors that occupied great space in Jackson’s life reminded her of the traumatic conditions of her father’s final years. Regrets about their relationship—things she didn’t try, calls she didn’t make—followed Lisa Marie. Jackson’s passing was yet another heartbreak.

Lisa Marie is survived by her three daughters. Her son, Benjamin Keough, tragically committed suicide in 2020, and now rests across from her father in Graceland’s meditation garden. Lisa Marie, in an article she wrote for People, said “My and my three daughters’ lives as we knew it were completely detonated and destroyed by his death.” The loss of her child was unimaginable. At the time of her death, Lisa Marie was very much still grieving, and her ex-husband Daniel Keough had moved into her Calabasas home while they mourned their son. Keough performed CPR on Lisa Marie the day she died.

Despite the immense losses she suffered, Lisa Marie was a survivor. She made a family for herself. She grappled with the addictions that plagued her father. She had a music career to be proud of. She created The Presley Foundation, a philanthropic non-public organization. And sadly, she had hoped to do so much more, personal friend and grief counselor David Kessler told Rolling Stone.

It’s hard to talk about Lisa Marie without addressing the dark clouds that haunted her life—they’re fearsome and famous. But Lisa Marie herself was never one to run, not from the weight of her father’s legacy nor the tragedies that followed her most of her life. “Lights Out” from her 2003 debut album To Whom It May Concern foretells:

Someone turned the lights out there in Memphis
Ooh, that’s where my family,
They’re buried and gone, oh yeah
Last time I was there I noticed a space left, oh
Next to them there in Memphis, yeah,
In the damn back lawn.