Lisa Marie Presley Memoir Recap/Discussion: Chapter 4
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by QUEEN OF GRACELAND (@queen_lisa_marie_presley)
(Photo from the book)
Chapters 1 & 2 recap || Chapter 3
Lisa Marie Presley’s memoir From Here to the Great Unknown was 85% done and spread across 16 tapes when she passed away in January 2023. The book consists of Lisa's recollections, daughter Riley Keough's assessments, memories and clarifications, as well as occasional input from Danny Keough, Lisa Marie’s first husband and best friend (and Riley's father).
There aren't any trigger warnings, I don't think? Mild trigger warning, just in case?
Chapter Four: There's a Bluebird in My Heart
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by THE PRESLEYS (@thepresleys)
• If you have the audiobook, we begin with audio of a very smiley/amused sounding Lisa describing Danny Keough. She heard of him before she ever met him because the girls were all about him and he had tons of girls in love with him. He was a heartbreaker. He was 21 and she had just turned 17 when they crossed paths. He was in a band that had a following and Danny and the lead singer were the ones with all of the groupies. All the guys in the band had a crush on Lisa, but she didn't notice because she had zero self-confidence and had her guard up after the relationship with the actor.
• Lisa threw herself a birthday party. This was her first meeting with Danny, it was fleeting and she forgot about it. The next meeting was at a dinner with friends at a restaurant on Melrose and Danny annoyed her with the comments he was making. She thought he was cocky and arrogant, and she annoyed him with her replies. They both ended up at a party in the Hollywood Hills with their group and when cake came out, she smeared cake on his face, he in turn smeared icing on her cheek…and licked it off. Lisa freaked out because she thought they were just being antagonistic with each other. Lisa says the more cocky and uninterested Danny played, the more she got smitten.
• A friend who was living with her and Priscilla walked out of the party before Lisa and tried to kiss Danny with Lisa seeing it happen. He pushed the girl away but Lisa was angry, thinking Danny was hooking up with her friend after trying to mack on her. A mortified Danny would explain himself to Lisa later and Lisa thinks the friend did this intentionally so she would lose interest in Danny.
• Riley recalls her father's charisma and how he had a red motorcycle. He was very handsome, girls loved him and everyone talked about him. Like Lisa Marie, Danny didn't care about fame and was allergic to it like Lisa.
• Danny was fixing his motorcycle when he first saw Lisa Marie as she walked across the Celebrity Center parking lot with Priscilla. He wondered who was that person with such attitude and when she locked eyes with him, he felt she had looked deep into him. Danny was a jazz fan and didn't know much about Elvis so he didn't know Elvis had a daughter, nor that Lisa was that child [note: a former scientologist who knew Danny confirmed this is indeed true!]. The two wouldn't have any conversations about Elvis during their relationship, Danny knew Elvis’ death affected Lisa deeply but she never brought it up with him.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Princess Lisa/Family (@gracelandprincess1968)
• Danny confirms he and Lisa did not get along when they first met. He felt Lisa was aloof but had a presence that had nothing to do with being Elvis’ kid. He found Lisa Marie “unbelievably physically stunning” and he liked her intensity and that she didn't want to impress anyone. At the dinner Lisa talked about, he actually remembers Lisa approaching him and saying “so you think you're hot shit.” As they went back and forth annoying each other, Danny thought he actually liked Lisa and quickly developed a crush on her. He liked her fiery attitude and the verbal sword fighting and once she told him he wasn't boyfriend material, he wanted her more.
• Lisa Marie says she didn't like one night stands or fleeting relationships. If she was into someone, she's really into them. If she's not, she's not.
• After another party, Lisa Marie drove Danny back to his apartment and he had a roommate that was in the witness protection program. They hung out in his room and she spent the night, then left alone. She says they just made out and talked, no sex. But Danny remembers the night differently, saying they drank, wrestled and broke a closet.
• After that, they fell into a relationship. Lisa was cautious because Danny had a trail of broken hearts and his longest relationship had lasted only six weeks. She said Danny was young, but she was even younger and trying to get her shit together. Lisa wanted to have meaning in her life.
• Lisa found Danny's confidence and cockiness attractive and is naturally drawn to alpha males because she doesn't like to wear the pants in the relationship despite being a strong willed woman. She credits that to her father being a powerful man. Lisa and Danny's initial relationship lasted four months, the longest relationship he had ever had and she was worried he had a wandering eye. She says “he could be a slippery son of a bitch, hard to keep a hold of.”
• Eventually Danny fell for an Italian girl who didn't speak English with hairy armpits and the relationship was over, despite Lisa being head over heels in love. She was stuck on him, devastated and obsessed for two years. She dated other men who were uninteresting and every guy knew she was in love with Danny.
• She knew she wanted Danny and she had a need to have children with him. She intuitively knew they were supposed to have children, that they were meant to be connected for life, and everything would always be okay.
• Danny moved away from Los Angeles for a spell and when he returned, he and Lisa were playing a cat and mouse game with each other. He would show up with a girl to a party, she would show up with a guy if she knew he'd be there and she was being calculating and manipulative to make him jealous. Despite Danny now being openly and visibly jealous, Lisa Marie still thought he didn't care about her.
• Riley chimes in saying her mom had no shame, chasing after her dad for two years. Despite Lisa's insecurity, Danny did care but was afraid of her fame and “he knew she would be his destruction.” Riley says her dad wasn't afraid of much when he was younger but Lisa scared the living shit out of him. He was just a bass player and Lisa's thing was way too big.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by THE PRESLEYS (@thepresleys)
• Lisa showed up at Danny's apartment and said enough games and they eventually went on a real date to the MTV video music awards. Danny almost got arrested when a paparazzo rushed at them in the dark and he reflexively hit the guy. They had to pose for photos so charges wouldn't be pressed and the pictures were sold for $70k to the press.
• The couple didn't think being famous was cool. Lisa had to downplay her extravagance and life for Danny because he was so proud and she didn't want to scare him off. Lisa even drove a used car and pretended to like jazz for him. He did odd jobs painting houses and playing gigs and they lived quietly without celebrity for the most part.
• There was an incident at the China Club where Lisa had a run in with Rick James. She was acquaintances with him and wanted to fix him because he seemed so broken. James was high as fuck, Danny saw James getting too physically close with Lisa and Danny shook his head at James in warning. James lunged at Danny and the bouncer grabbed James midair and threw him out.
• Lisa began working for Elvis bff Jerry Schilling and attending the Elvis Presley Enterprises meetings. Priscilla wanted her to get trained to take over when she turned 25. One day, Lisa Marie sat at the head of the table at an Elvis Presley Enterprises meeting and Priscilla walked up to her and said "don't you ever sit in my seat at the head of the table. Who do you think you are? This is my business, I'm the one who opened Graceland, you can't just come in and sit there like you're something.”
• Schilling began managing Jerry Lee Lewis, who loved Lisa Marie. The office got a message to Lisa Marie on a plane she was riding with Lewis to not get off the plane because the feds were waiting for Lewis since he had drugs in his luggage. They ended up abandoning the luggage and fleeing. Schilling fired her after six months because she hated answering the phone.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by 🔹Fan Page🔹 (@priscillapresleyelvisfan)
• Lisa got pregnant the first four months they dated and she had an ectopic pregnancy. The second pregnancy was after a year together and Lisa got an abortion because they didn't know what to do, which she called the stupidest thing she ever did in her life. Her and Danny cried over the abortion they had, it destroyed them and they broke up.
• Danny started playing with his band on a cruise ship while Lisa traveled Europe. She was devastated over the abortion and began to plot and pinpoint when she was ovulating and even got her aunt in Memphis involved to make it happen. She purposefully met up with Danny on one of the cruise stops and hooked up in Aruba. Danny had no idea what she was doing and she didn't care what he thought or if he wanted to be involved because she felt she had to make amends for having an abortion. She would apologize to the aborted child and beg them to stay with her until she got pregnant again.
• Lisa indeed got pregnant and called Danny up to tell him. She said, looking back on it, he had to marry her and she trapped him but didn't mean to. An amused sounding Riley chimes in and says her mother told her every detail of her conception and her mom absolutely meant to trap her dad. Danny never intended to be a dad or married but something told him to go for it and he told Lisa “okay.”
• Priscilla was not happy that Lisa Marie was pregnant. She thought Danny was just a really good looking musician with no real job or prospects and wanted Lisa Marie with someone more “distinguished.” Priscilla's new boyfriend whom Lisa called “machiavellian” who no one knew what he did for a living took Danny to the tennis court for a talk and Danny came back pale. The boyfriend told Danny that Lisa Marie would throw him out when she was done with him, that she owned him and he would lose his dreams because this was all bigger than him and she didn't love or care about him.
• Riley confirms there were multiple attempts to separate Danny from Lisa to gain control of her (she doesn't name the culprits but you can guess whom she is vaguely implicating). The tennis court incident was the first attempt. She says her mom was all emotion while her dad was deeply intelligent and that threatened “people” because it made it harder to control her. There were attempts to have Riley aborted and to have Danny followed and incriminated but Danny always came back swinging until it almost killed him to protect Lisa [note: Riley never elaborates further on the first and last parts of this revelation].
• Priscilla's new boyfriend hired PIs to investigate Danny's past while he was on tour and they told Lisa Marie what they found out was so dark that they couldn't even tell her. When Danny returned, Lisa was cold and distant and when he found out why, he and Lisa went to the boyfriend and Danny told the guy he had permission to tell Lisa everything he found out about Danny right there. The boyfriend actually had nothing on Danny and said oops it was a mistake.
• Lisa was petrified over the outside interference and thought it was her and Danny against the world. They got married at the Celebrity Center with only her mom and friends in attendance [note: it was previously said in a VH1 LMP doc that Danny and Lisa secretly eloped in a normal way, which was confirmed by Priscilla's sister on Instagram, and they got married in front of others later].
• Lisa was harassed by paparazzi while pregnant, she was chased in cars and called fat. Danny and Lisa bought a starter house in the Valley. During labor before the epidural, Danny tried to help Lisa focus on a pyramid when she was screaming in pain and she told him “fuck the pyramid and fuck you!”
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by THE PRESLEYS (@thepresleys)
• The first photo of Riley got today's equivalent of $1mil from People magazine. Lisa and Danny only did it in an attempt to get the press to leave them alone. Riley's birth made the cover, announcing Elvis’ first grandchild.
• Lisa was married at 20, a mother at 21, similar to Priscilla. She remembers everyone was happy when Riley was born. She describes Riley as “a special beacon, a unique spirit, a light in this universe…Riley was mine, but she was for everyone else too.”
• Lisa fell in love with being a mom and she felt she was called to care for someone else. Being a mom was everything to Lisa and she decided she would do the opposite in raising Riley of the parenting given to her by her parents.
• Danny started in a band called Ten Inch Men and Lisa got a crush on the lead singer. The lead singer told Lisa they would be perfect together if Danny wasn't in the picture. Lisa told Danny because she was always honest with him, and Danny started watching Lisa during performances as she watched the lead singer. Danny's jealousy would break up the band.
• Danny started using mushrooms and smoking weed and that caused big fights in the marriage because Lisa was completely drug free. But for the most part, Lisa and Danny were solid. They got a new house in Mountain Gate in 1991 and lived normally with Riley, throwing parties and barbecues.
• Riley's first solid memory is of her parents running down their street in the Mountain Gate community and a very upset Lisa Marie holding her while screaming “Jaco ran away!” over and over. She was referring to the family dog named after jazz musician Jaco Pastorius that escaped the house they lived in. They never found the dog.
• Riley admits her parents, now 26 and 22, weren't very responsible but they loved her very much. Riley never doubted her parents’ love for her- it was the same unconditional love Lisa had felt from Elvis.
• Lisa flirting with the lead singer of Ten Inch Men was hard on Danny because it fucked up his two zones of family and band. After a tour, he admitted he kissed twins on the tour but was proud there was no sex. Lisa wasn't as proud of Danny as he was and threw a plate across the kitchen at him.
• The family started to get death threats and one guy from Arkansas threatened to kill Danny and kidnap Riley. Danny sent Lisa and Riley to Hawaii and sat in their house with a gun waiting for him. Another time Danny had to call the cops because there was a man with a gun outside their house, the guy got beat up by the cops and he later sued Danny. The family was then forced to live in gated communities.
• Lisa loved being a mom and wanted another child, a boy. Priscilla gave her advice on having a boy, telling Lisa to have sex right before her ovulation so the boy sperm gets there first because boy sperm was quicker but died faster [note: my mom said this is called the Shettles Method idk]. Lisa and Danny ended up having sex three times a day in that ovulation window and stopping before the girl sperm could escape.
• Her next pregnancy was very easy with very little weight gained and Benjamin was born. They lived in Florida for a year and Lisa loved the extreme weather, she loved rain. Everything was going great because Danny and Lisa had chilled out. But then Lisa Marie started taking vocal lessons.
• Lisa Marie had Danny produce a demo of her singing the Aretha Franklin song ‘Baby I Love You’ They wrote music and did a demo tape together at a studio where Danny used to work, he got fired because he- like Lisa- had a problem answering phones. Word got out about Lisa Marie’s demo tape. Prince, Michael Jackson, etc started swarming. That demo tape would end up changing their lives forever.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by @lisa_marie_presley.68
Michael Jackson enters the picture Thursday. Yeah.
Source: me and my handy dandy book and audible account, pics: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven