Lisa Marie Presley’s memoir reveals worry about dad Elvis dying young
Lisa Marie Presley “always worried” about her dad Elvis Presley and was plagued by fears about him dying.
The singer lost her famous father in 1977 when she was nine years old and now her posthumous memoir From Here to the Great Unknown reveals she spent much of her childhood worrying about her dad.
In an excerpt from the book, Lisa wrote: “I was always worried about my dad dying. Sometimes I’d see him and he was out of it. Sometimes I would find him passed out. I wrote a poem with the line, ‘I hope my daddy doesn’t die’.”
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.In the book, due to be published in October less than two years since Lisa’s death in January 2023, she also wrote about the joy she felt seeing her father perform on stage.
“The electricity of those shows. There’s nothing I’ve felt that’s been even close to that feeling, ever. Electrifying is such a generic word, but it really is what it felt like. I loved watching him perform.
“I had certain songs that I liked - Hurt, and How Great Thou Art. I would ask him to sing those songs for me and he would always say yes.”
Lisa had been working on From Here To The Unknown when she died in January 2023 and it was finished by her daughter Riley Keough, who used her mother’s audio recordings to piece together the rest of the book.
She has admitted she was initially “afraid” to listen to the recordings the singer had made of her memories from over the years.
In an extract from the book’s introduction published by People magazine, she wrote: “Days and weeks and months of grief drifted by. Then I got the tapes of the memoir interviews she’d done. I was in my house, sitting on the couch. My daughter was sleeping.
“I was so afraid to hear my mother’s voice - the physical connection we have to the voices of our loved ones is profound. I decided to lie in my bed because I know how heavy grief makes my body feel.
“I began listening to her speak. It was incredibly painful but I couldn’t stop. It was like she was in the room, talking to me. I instantly felt like a child again and I burst into tears. My mommy. The tone of her voice.”
From Here to the Great Unknown is released on October 8.
