The intrigue around the Presley family has only heightened since the posthumous release of the late Lisa Marie Presley's memoir, "From Here to the Great Unknown."
As one of the most fascinating families in rock and roll, the book had two generations of Presleys work on it. After Lisa Marie's sudden passing in 2023 from surgery complications due to a small bowel obstruction, her daughter Riley Keough finished the book on her behalf, using a surplus of various diaries and taped interviews conducted for the crafting of the book as shortly as a month prior to her death.
But besides the ties to the legendary rock family, the memoir has made waves for its bombshell revelations about the life that Lisa Marie lived that was all her own. Released on Oct. 8, the memoir covers everything from her childhood as Elvis Presley's daughter, her relationship with Michael Jackson and the tragic loss of her son, Benjamin Keough.
Here are some of the most shocking moments from "From Here to the Great Unknown."
Lisa Marie kept her son Benjamin on dry ice for two months after his death
After the sudden loss of Lisa Marie's son Benjamin by suicide in 2020, the grieving mother chose to keep his body close to her. Benjamin's body was kept on dry ice for two months after his death in a separate bedroom in the family's Los Angeles home. The memoir details that Lisa Marie kept his body at a 55-degree temperature to preserve it, People Magazine reported.
"There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately," Lisa Marie writes.
Riley, Benjamin's older sister, writes that it was crucial for her mother to "have ample time to say goodbye to him, the same way she'd done with her dad," who died in 1977 when she was 9.
Lisa Marie explains in the book that it was difficult to decide where to bury her son: Hawaii or her father's estate, Graceland. She eventually chose to lay him to rest in the Meditation Garden at Graceland, next to the rest of her family, where she herself is buried now, right next to him.
"That was part of why it took so long," she writes. "I got so used to [Benjamin], caring for him and keeping him there. I think it would scare the living [expletive] out of anybody else to have their son there like that. But not me."
She continues, "I felt so fortunate that there was a way that I could still parent him, delay it a bit longer so that I could become okay with laying him to rest."
In a tribute to Benjamin, the family members got tattoos of his name in the same style as the tattoos he'd gotten for them. Lisa Marie even invited a tattoo artist to look at his body so that they could get the tattoos accurate. Riley writes, "I've had an extremely absurd life, but this moment is in the top five."
If you are in crisis, please call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
Michael Jackson allegedly told Lisa Marie he was a virgin when the pair met
When the couple met and began dating in 1993, according to the memoir, Jackson told Lisa Marie that he was still a virgin. At the time, Jackson was 35 and Lisa Marie was 26. According to her memoir, their first meeting was when she was 6 years old and she was introduced to a 15-year-old Jackson and his band Jackson 5 during a performance in Las Vegas.
"He told me he was still a virgin," Lisa Marie details in the book. "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 tried to hook up with him once, too, but nothing happened."
Lisa Marie also shares in the book that she was nervous to make any moves with the pop singer. “I was terrified because I didn’t want to make the wrong move. When he decided to first kiss me, he just did it. He was instigating everything. The physical stuff started happening, which I was shocked at. I had thought that maybe we wouldn’t do anything until we got married, but he said, ‘I’m not waiting!’”
The pair married in 1994 and divorced two years later citing "irreconcilable differences." However, the couple was on and off for four years after their divorce, Entertainment Weekly reported.
Lisa Marie writes of their marriage, “I was actually so happy. I’ve never been that happy again."
During her battle with addiction, Lisa Marie took 80 pills a day
Lisa Marie had long been open about her struggle with opioid addiction in her life. However, her recreational use of drugs worsened when the star became addicted to prescription painkillers following the 2008 birth of her twins Finley and Harper, People Magazine reported.
"It escalated to 80 pills a day," Lisa Marie writes in the book. "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 . . . It was an absolute matter of addiction, withdrawal in the big leagues. I just wanted to check out. It was too painful to be sober."
From Riley's perspective, she shares that her mother started taking opioids to cope with the pain of a c-section delivery, but "then she progressed to taking them to sleep." She details that Lisa Marie felt "shame" around her addiction because she had two young children. She recalls that outside her mother's stint with drugs as a teenager, Lisa Marie didn't even take over-the-counter medication as an adult, prior to her addiction.
Elvis Presley and his wife, Priscilla, prepare to leave the hospital with their new daughter, Lisa Marie. Memphis, Tennessee, February 5, 1968. (Getty Images/Bettmann)
Lisa Marie sensed her father's death at just nine-years-old
In "From Here to the Great Unknown," for the first time, Lisa Marie opens up about the details of her father Elvis' death, revealing that she wrote a poem in her diary prior to his passing with the ominous line, "I hope my daddy doesn't die," and recalls that as a young girl, she would frequently see her father in pain.
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey for CBS Mornings, Riley shares that her mother had a sense of intuition about Elvis' death.
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"She said goodnight to him and I think she knew like saying goodnight . . . she had some kind of sense many times that he wasn't OK," she details. "She would tell me sometimes she would find him in his bathroom looking kind of out of it or holding onto the railing to stand up straight."
In the memoir, Lisa Marie recalls the night her father passed away. She writes that she kissed him and told him she loved him and he told her to "go to bed."
The next day, the nine-year-old was met with the sight of her father being wheeled into an ambulance after being told he had tragically passed away.
"My life as I knew it was completely over," she writes. "He's dead, and now I'm stuck with [Priscilla]."
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