Riley Keough immediately agreed to help complete her mother’s memoir. She thought they would write it together reflecting her extraordinary upbringing and life, but it became too much of a responsibility after the sudden death of Lisa Marie Presley in 2023.
In an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the book’s release Tuesday, Keough said his mother — the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley and a recording artist herself — was “all in” in completing the work she started years ago. types of emotions” arose. ,
Keough said, “It felt like a kind of duty I had to fulfill for him.” “I’m just happy that it’s done and that it will be out in the world and for people to read.”
“From Here to the Great Unknown” is named after the poignant lyrics of Presley’s “Where No One Stands Alone”, a song Lisa Marie sang with her father 50 years after its first release and 40 years since The song was recorded as a duet much later. after his death.
The book touches on themes of “love and loss and grief and mothers and daughters and addiction”, Keough said, adding that it was conceived as a way for Lisa Marie to tell her story in her own words and connect with others. Was.
Much of the book is actually in Lisa Marie’s words, as Keough faithfully listened to recordings of her mother’s memories and experiences, both big and small. Lisa Marie wrote candidly about the day her father died, her relationship with her mother, her marriage to Michael Jackson, her struggle with addiction, and the death of her son Benjamin in 2020, among many other parts of her life .
Although Lisa Marie’s life became tabloid fodder in the days after her birth, her memoir details intimate moments at Graceland, including how as a young girl she feared for Presley’s health. Was. In the chapter titled “He’s Gone” she wrote that as a child, she often worried about her father dying and also wrote a poem with the line “I hope my father will not die”. Was.
He also wrote that Graceland became a “free-for-all” on the day of Presley’s death in 1977, with people at the home taking jewelry and personal belongings “before he was pronounced dead.”
Lisa Marie’s candid writing extends to a section focused on her headline-making marriage to Jackson from 1994 to 1996. She wrote that Jackson had confessed his love for her when she was married to Keough, and that he wanted to have children with her. Their relationship broke down due to his increasing dependence on prescription drugs.
Keough said that hearing her mother’s voice in the recording was “heartbreaking” at times, but she enjoyed hearing happy memories, such as how her parents met and fell in love. Keough is one of two children Lisa Marie had with her first husband, musician Danny Keough, and his late son Benjamin.
“With that, I want to tell everyone to talk to their parents and record them telling all the stories about how they met and all this stuff because it’s so cool,” she said.
Keough’s role was to fill in the parts of Lisa Marie’s story that she did not get before her death in January 2023 from a blockage of the small intestine caused by bariatric surgery she had years earlier. Some of those interludes included light-hearted moments and fond memories of her mother’s adult life.
“Up until my mother’s addiction, really, when I was 25, I think we would all say that our life was really beautiful and exceptionally fortunate and wonderful,” Keough said. “I would not define our lives collectively as a tragedy. I think there’s a lot more.”
And while those fun, light-hearted moments, such as Lisa Marie riding through Graceland on her golf cart and Keough playing hooky from school to visit with her mother, are detailed throughout the book, Keough said Lisa Marie She wanted to write about the grief and loss of her son.
Writing about her experience grieving her brother and detailing his death by suicide was “not something that came naturally” to Keough, but she said she knew her mother would not have shied away from it. Lisa Marie wrote that she wanted to honor her son by having open conversations about suicide, addiction and mental health.
“How do I get better?” Lisa Marie writes in the book. “By helping people.”
For Keough, much of her life now revolves around learning to live with grief and dealing with the enormous loss she has suffered.
“My last four years have been very sad. But it’s something I walk around with. You just have a broken heart, and that’s the way it is, and you just learn to live with these holes and grief and pain and love and longing and missingness and confusion and all of it,” Keough said. “It’s very complicated. I think you just have to try and let it be there.”
While much of Lisa Marie’s life consisted of singular experiences, being the daughter of the King of Rock and Roll, Keough said her mother “wanted to connect with people on a human level” through her memoir.
“His goal was to tell his story so that people could relate and feel less alone in the world, which is why I think we tell stories,” Keough said. “So, that’s my goal.”
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