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Artist News
Lisa Marie Presley dies
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 13 January 2023
Lisa Marie Presley – the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley – has died, aged 54. She was taken to hospital in California following a cardiac arrest yesterday morning, but died later in the day.
“It is with a heavy heart that I must share the devastating news that my beautiful daughter Lisa Marie has left us”, said Priscilla Presley in a statement. “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”.
Born in 1968, Presley’s parents divorced when she was four years old, and her father died when she was nine. On her 25th birthday, she inherited the Elvis Presley estate as its sole heir – it having been held in trust and managed by her mother until that date. At that time the estate was estimated to be worth $100 million.
In 2003, Presley embarked on her own music career, with the release of her debut album, ‘To Whom It May Concern’. It was certified gold in the US and the first single from it, ‘Lights Out’, went to number sixteen in the UK. Her second album, ‘Now What’, followed two years later, which went top ten in the US, but was less commercially successful than its predecessor.
She did not release another album until 2012. ‘Storm & Grace’ was produced by T Bone Burnett and featured songs co-written with artists including Richard Hawley, Ed Harcourt and Travis’s Fran Healy. Although she received some of the most positive reviews of her career for the record, it did not sell particularly well.
Her final recording to be released was a new version of Elvis song ‘Where No One Stands Alone’ in 2018, which combined her father’s original vocals with newly recorded ones of her own to make it a duet. The track featured on a compilation of the same name, which took fourteen gospel songs recorded by Elvis, giving them new instrumentation and backing vocals.
“It was a very powerful and moving experience to sing with my father”, Lisa Marie wrote in the liner notes for the album. “The lyrics speak to me and touch my soul. I’m certain that the lyrics spoke to my father in much the same way”.
Presley was married four times, most famously to Michael Jackson between 1994 and 1996. During their engagement, Jackson was facing his first child abuse allegations, and it was she who encouraged him to settle out of court with his accuser – which he did for a reported $23 million in January 1994.
The couple separated in 1995 and Presley filed for divorce in January 1996, citing “irreconcilable differences”. The brevity of their marriage did little to deter rumours that the relationship had been little more than an effort to draw attention away from Jackson’s child abuse allegations.
Although, in a 2010 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Presley said that the couple had attempted to reconcile several times for four years after their split – despite him being married to his second wife Debbie Rowe during that time.
She was also married to musicians Danny Keough and Michael Lockwood, as well as actor Nicolas Cage.
In 2005, Presley sold 85% of the Elvis Presley estate’s business holdings, Elvis Presley Enterprises, to entertainment firm Industrial Media (then known as CKX and headed by Robert FX Sillerman) in a deal worth around $100 million.
“For the past few years I’ve been looking for someone to join forces with to expand EPE, to take it to new levels internationally, and to make it an even greater force in the entertainment industry”, said Presley at the time. The deal also brought her a considerable amount of cash and relieved her of EPE’s $25 million of debt.
Under the deal, she retained ownership of her former family home, Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee. She visited the property last weekend to mark what would have been her father’s 88th birthday.
Her last public appearance was at the Golden Globe Awards in LA on Tuesday, where Baz Luhrmann’s biopic of her father, ‘Elvis’, was nominated for three awards, with Austin Butler winning Best Actor for his portrayal of Elvis.
