Lisa Marie Presley, singer-songwriter and only child of Elvis Presley, died on Thursday after a medical emergency and a brief hospitalisation. She was 54.
“Priscilla Presley and the Presley family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Lisa Marie,” Sam Mast, a representative for Priscilla Presley, her mother, said in a statement. “They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time.”
Earlier in the day, Priscilla Presley said in a statement that her daughter had been receiving medical attention but did not share more information.
Lisa Marie suffered cardiac arrest in her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas, according to the entertainment website TMZ. She was then taken to the hospital.
The daughter of one of the most celebrated artists in history, Lisa Marie followed the career path of her father, Elvis Presley. She released three albums in which she set out to distinguish her rock sound while also paying homage to the man who forever changed the American soundscape by blending blues, gospel, pop and country.
From 1994 to 1996, Lisa Marie was married to Michael Jackson. Together, the pair — one the daughter of the king of rock ’n’ roll, the other regarded as the king of pop — attracted the glare of cameras and bountiful attention. In 2002, she married the actor Nicolas Cage, but the couple separated within a four-month period that same year.
The enormous legacy of her father was a constant presence throughout Lisa Marie’s life. On Tuesday, she was again celebrating him at the Golden Globes, telling Extra TV that Austin Butler, who won the lead acting award for drama for his performance in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis, had perfectly captured the essence of her father.
“I was mind-blown, truly,” said Lisa Marie, who was 9 years old when her father died in 1977. “I actually had to take, like, five days to process it because it was so spot-on and authentic.”
On Sunday, Lisa Marie was at Graceland, Elvis’s estate in Memphis, to commemorate what would have been her father’s 88th birthday.
The father and daughter were extremely close, with Elvis once flying her out to Idaho after she said she had never seen snow. Her father named his 1958 Convair 880 private jet “The Lisa Marie”.
Lisa Maria owned Graceland and her father’s artifacts. She also owned 15 per cent of Elvis Presley Enterprises.
Her music career, however, never exploded as it had for her father. But his influence was evident in her songs and some lyrics. In her debut album from 2003, To Whom It May Concern, she sings in the bluesy, melancholic song Lights Out that “someone turned the lights out there in Memphis. That’s where my family’s buried and gone”.
Still, her last name had always enshrined her as a celebrity. And her ties only deepened that perception.
Before Jackson, Lisa Marie married the musician Danny Keough in 1988. They separated after six years and had two children together, including the actress Riley Keough and Benjamin Keough, who died by suicide at age 27 in 2020. In recent years, she was married to Michael Lockwood, with whom she had twin daughters, Finley Lockwood and Harper Lockwood. They divorced in 2021.
In the foreword of the book, The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain, Lisa Marie wrote about her struggle with addiction.
In a 2022 People magazine essay, Lisa Marie said that her life had been struck with death, grief and loss since her childhood, writing that the death of Keough had been a devastating blow to her and her three daughters.
“Grief does not stop or go away in any sense, a year, or years after the loss,” she said. “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.”
New York Times News Service and Reuters
