Lisa Marie Presley’s Book Bombshells: 10 Revelations From ‘Here to the Great Unknown’

Here are the biggest bombshells.
1. She Saw Elvis’ Death Coming
Growing up at Graceland, the family’s famed Memphis mansion, Lisa Marie saw the effects of her father Elvis Presley’s prescription drug abuse long before his 1977 death at the age of 42 from a heart attack.

“I wrote a poem with the line, ‘I hope my daddy doesn’t die,'” she writes, recalling how she once found him face down on the floor of his bathroom. “I knew that something tragic was coming.” The day he died, Lisa Marie, then 9, awoke to find him being carried out on a stretcher. “My life as I knew it was completely over.”

2. She Was Abused by Her Mother’s Boyfriend
Lisa Marie alleges that her mother Priscilla Presley’s former boyfriend Mommie Dearest actor Michael Edwards began sexually abusing her when she was 10. “He would touch me and spank me, telling me not to look,” she writes, adding, “I assume he was jerking off.”

When her mother confronted Michael about the abuse, she recalls, “He’d say, ‘Oh, I was drunk’ or ‘She was actually flirting with me.’ I was 11, 12, 13.” (Michael did not return one news outlet’s call for comment.)

3. She Tried to Kill Herself
When she was 14, Lisa Marie — who died at 54 in January 2023 from a small bowel obstruction — started dating a 23-year-old man who sold compromising photos of her. Devastated, she took 20 Valium with the intention of ending her life.

4. She Partied at the Scientology Center
During Lisa Marie’s teen years, Priscilla decided to move her rebellious daughter into the controversial church’s celebrity center. “The first morning I removed the large mirror from the wall, called my coke dealer and invited him and about six or seven other people over,” she writes. “We proceeded to have a four-day bender in that room.” (She later went on to embrace Scientology: “[It] actually helped [me]. The church felt radical in an exciting way… It attracted cool, unusual, artistic people. It became my tribe.”)

5. She and Michael Jackson Met as Kids
According to Lisa Marie, she first encountered her future husband when she was “about 6.” (He was 10 years older.) Michael was in Las Vegas performing with his brothers when they were introduced.

While she had no recollection of their initial meeting, Michael did. When Lisa Marie was a teen, the pop star invited Priscilla out to dinner. “I found out later that he was hoping that I’d come with her,” she writes. “He didn’t say so directly because he didn’t want it to seem weird.”

6. Michael Was a Virgin
When they met again in 1993, they “just clicked,” Lisa Marie writes. “I thought he was lonely and needed a friend. But he was pursuing me.” In the early days of their romance, Michael told Lisa Marie he was a virgin. He’d kissed exes Tatum O’Neal and Brooke Shields and told her Madonna “had tried to hook up with him once, too, but nothing happened,” she writes.

At first, she was nervous about being intimate, but Michael took the reins. “He was instigating everything,” she says. “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!'”

7. She Never Saw Michael Act Shady
Prior to his 2009 death, the “Thriller” singer was accused of sexually abusing several young boys. (He denied the charges.) Lisa Marie — who was wed to Michael from 1994 until 1996 — says she did not witness any illicit behavior. “As for child molestation, I never saw a goddamn thing like that,” she writes. “I personally would have killed him if I had.”

8. She Planned Riley’s Pregnancy
Before marrying musician Danny Keough in 1988, Lisa Marie had an abortion, a decision she soon regretted. “[It was] the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my whole life,” she writes, noting that she “planned, plotted and schemed” her subsequent pregnancy with Riley, 35. “Danny knew he had to marry me. I trapped him. I didn’t really mean to, but I did.”

9. She Did Drugs on the Way to Rehab
In 2008, after giving birth to twins Harper and Finley, 16 (dad is ex Michael Lockwood), the singer became addicted to drugs, consuming 80 pills a day. Her son, Ben, rented a tour bus to drive her from Nashville to L.A. to get her help. “I wanted to do cocaine the whole time and couldn’t if I was on an airplane,” she says.

10. She Kept Ben on Ice
“We all knew my mom was going to die of a broken heart,” Riley writes of Ben’s suicide at age 27 in 2020. (Riley completed her mom’s memoir after her death, using tapes Lisa Marie had made and adding her own recollections.) Following Ben’s death, Lisa Marie brought his body home, keeping it in a 55-degree room for two months before laying him to rest at Graceland. “I got so used to him, caring for him and keeping him,” she writes.

Riley says when she and her mom got tattoos honoring Ben, Lisa Marie opened his casket to show the tattoo artist Ben’s ink. “I’ve had an extremely absurd life, but this moment is in the top five,” concludes the Daisy Jones & the Six star.