Riley Keough ‘burst into tears’ hearing her late mother Lisa Marie Presley’s voice on tapes recorded for memoir: ‘I instantly felt like a child again’
Riley Keough ‘burst into tears’ upon hearing the numerous audio tapes her late mother Lisa Marie Presley recorded for her autobiography From Here to the Great Unknown, which Random House will publish on October 8.
‘I was in my house, sitting on the couch. My [two-year-old daughter Tupelo Storm Smith-Petersen] was sleeping. I was so afraid to hear my mother’s voice — the physical connection we have to the voices of our loved ones is profound,’ the 35-year-old granddaughter of Elvis Presley wrote in an excerpt obtained by People.
‘I decided to lie in my bed because I know how heavy grief makes my body feel. I began listening to her speak. It was incredibly painful but I couldn’t stop. It was like she was in the room, talking to me. I instantly felt like a child again and I burst into tears. My mommy. The tone of her voice.’
Riley (born Danielle) continued: ‘I am aware that the recordings my mother left are a gift. So often, all that’s left of a loved one is a saved and re-saved voicemail, a short video on a phone, some favorite photos. I take the privilege of these tapes very seriously.’
Readers of the audiobook version of the 272-page memoir will get to hear ‘never-before-heard recollections’ from Lisa Marie as well as narration from Keough, who was asked to co-write it one month before her tragic death at age 54 on January 12, 2023.
‘She said to me, “Pookie, I don’t know how to write my book anymore. Can you write it with me?” Of course I can,’ I said,’ the Emmy nominee wrote.
‘The last 10 years of her life had been so brutally hard that she was only able to look back on everything through that lens. She felt I could have a more holistic view of her life than she could. So I agreed to help her with it, not thinking much of the commitment, assuming we would write it together over time. A month later, she died.’
In the excerpt, Riley shocking revealed it was her father Danny Keough, who discovered the lifeless body of his ex-wife and ‘tried to resuscitate her.’
Lisa Marie passed away from ‘small bowel obstruction’ as a result of bariatric surgery several years prior, and over 30ft of her small intestine was already dead before she was rushed to the hospital.
‘Recent studies have shown that if you’re on Ozempic-type [semaglutide injectable] drugs, they can slow down you intestines,’ plastic surgeon Dr. Terry Dubrow theorized to TMZ Live last year.
‘They can predispose you to intestinal obstruction and there may be the perfect unfortunate storm of previous surgery with intestinal scarring and opioid use, so you can’t tell that you’re that sick.’
However, the 66-year-old Botched star cautioned: ‘Now I don’t know that she was on that.’
Presley never got over the death of her and the 59-year-old ex-bass player’s son Benjamin Keough, at age 27, in 2020 from a self-inflicted shotgun wound inside her former $1.8M Calabasas mansion.
