The Presley family’s long-held secrets are finally coming to light with the posthumous release of Lisa Marie Presley’s memoir, “From Here to the Great Unknown.” The book, co-written by her daughter Riley Keough after Lisa Marie’s sudden passing in January, pulls back the curtain on the Presley dynasty, exposing a whirlwind of bombshell revelations.
From the King’s granddaughter’s struggles with addiction to her mother’s chilling connection to the tragic death of her son, the memoir is a must-read for any fan of the legendary rock and roll family.
Perhaps the most shocking disclosure is the staggering extent of Lisa Marie’s opioid addiction. The singer-songwriter candidly admits that at the height of her dependency, she was taking a jaw-dropping 80 pills per day. “It escalated to 80 pills a day,” she writes. “It took more and more to get high, and I honestly don’t know when your body decides it can’t deal with it anymore. But it does decide at some point.”
Lisa Marie’s daughter Riley paints a heartbreaking picture of her mother’s downward spiral, sharing that the addiction began after the 2008 birth of her twins. What started as using painkillers to cope with the C-section surgery quickly spiraled into a full-blown addiction, with Lisa Marie admitting she was “trying to check out” from the agony of sobriety.
The memoir also reveals the devastating impact that the 2020 suicide of Lisa Marie’s son Benjamin had on the family. Riley poignantly recalls how her mother was utterly shattered by the loss, confessing that she “couldn’t imagine a world where she would make it without him.”
In one of the book’s most disturbing passages, Lisa Marie describes her son as being “so much like [Elvis] it scared me.” She writes, “Ben was very similar to his grandfather, very, very, and in every way. He even looked like him. Ben was so much like him, it scared me.”
Tragically, Lisa Marie found solace in an unorthodox grieving ritual, keeping Benjamin’s body on dry ice in a separate room of their Los Angeles home for two whole months after his death. “There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately,” she writes, explaining that she needed the extra time to say goodbye.
The book also delves into Lisa Marie’s tumultuous marriage to Michael Jackson, with the singer claiming the King of Pop told her he was still a virgin when they first met in 1993, at which point he was 35 and she was 26. “He told me he was still a virgin,” Lisa Marie reveals. “I think he had kissed Tatum O’Neal, and he’d had a thing with Brooke Shields, which hadn’t been physical apart from a kiss. He said Madonna had also tried to hook up with him, but nothing happened.”
However, perhaps the most poignant revelation in the memoir comes from Lisa Marie’s recollection of the final moments she shared with her father, the legendary Elvis Presley. The book details how, as a young girl, Lisa Marie had a hunch about her father’s death, writing in her diary, “I hope my daddy doesn’t die.”
Lisa Marie describes her heartbreaking last exchange with him on a fateful day in 1977 when the King of Rock and Roll passed away. “The morning he died, I kissed him and told him I loved him, and he said, ‘Go to bed,'” she writes. “My life as I knew it was completely over.”
Through it all, Riley Keough has emerged as the keeper of the Presley flame, determined to honor her mother’s legacy and provide a raw, accurate portrait of the family’s trials and tribulations. As the sole heir to the Graceland estate, Riley has vowed to continue running the iconic property, ensuring that the Presley name and story endures.
“I think, like, my instinct with everything is always to do what my mother would have wanted,” Riley told Oprah Winfrey in a recent interview. “Which is to keep it home. It was our family’s home.”
With the release of this unflinching memoir, the Presley family’s most intimate secrets have been laid bare. But through the darkness, a glimmer of light shines – the unbreakable bond of a family forever etched in the annals of music history.