Lisa-Marie in the Rolling Stone magazine
Vincent Couture
Lisa Marie Presley from "Rolling Stone" (Apr.10, 2003) Daughter of Elvis,
ex-wife of Michael Jackson -- you better believe she has a story to tell. In
a no-holds-barred interview, she speaks about her three marriages, her dad
and her crush on Darth Vader.
Here's some parts of this interview ...
... It is during dessert that she mentions her crush on Darth Vader. "I was
obsessed with him," she says. This was only about five years ago, when her
son got into Star Wars. Instead of hogging his toys, she got her own. She
had a Darth Vader watch and a small Vader on her office desk that, upon the
press of a button, would gesticulate with his light saber and tell her,
"Impressive, most impressive -- but you're not a Jedi yet." She also dressed
up as Vader one Halloween. When I quiz her in further detail about all this,
the conversation takes several strange turns.
He didn't even have a proper mouth!
"Well, I wasn't thinking that deep into it. That whole black dark thing I
liked: the cape, the voice, the breathing, the whole thing."
The voice? The breathing? You imagined the two of you running away together?
"God, I wish. I just wished he was real."
Have you now moved away from the dark side?
"No. Never. God, I hope not." She considers a moment: "You know, I'm sure
it's connected in some weird way to the grandness and the bigness of an
earlier loss in my life. Some sort of representation of this grand, powerful
. . . not dark and evil . . . but this thing in my life that went away. And
maybe it's some twisted fucking way to try and replace that." She shrugs.
"If you want to get down to the psychology of it."
What is the grand, powerful thing? Your father?
"Yeah."
So do you think Darth Vader is? . . .
"No. I'm talking about somebody in my eyes that was, to me, so
overwhelmingly grand and powerful -- and sometimes dark, depending on mood.
And there was that for the first nine years of my life. Maybe I have been in
search of something like that. It's very hard to compete with that in my
mind. That's what he was to me as a child -- this huge, electrifyingly
powerful, grand, beautiful presence. It's like a lost duckling who walks
around looking for that; I'm not really doing that, but I guess in some
weird kind of psychological bullshit, that could be what's going on." ...
... The other song explicitly about her father is called "Nobody Noticed
It." It was written after a day when, clicking through the TV channels, she
stumbled across the E! True Hollywood Story: The Last Days of Elvis in which
many of her father's associates and hangers-on talked about his downfall. "I
couldn't believe they were trying to take his dignity -- Sonny West, Marty
Lacker, Red West, all these people that were worse than him." These were all
people she knew from his lifetime: "They scared the hell out of me when I
was a kid, too. I remember seeing the Playboys, the drugs, the women -- I
watched it all, and I watched them. I know the real story behind all of
them, and I know what they're out there doing." . After seeing the program,
she was in shock. She couldn't sleep, she was so angry. "I just thought,
'You slithering motherfuckers have no right. None. You were responsible for
this just as much as he was. His dignity was one of the most important
things to him, and you are trying to take it away.' "
--- I think she's still very angry about the Memphis Mafia ...
... She called one of her co-writers and put her fury and sadness into a
song. "All that you had to endure . . ." she sang, "nobody noticed it." "He
didn't have anyone to keep him leveled off. You get into this world where
nothing you do is wrong. I don't think any artist has really done that well
with it -- they usually end up destroying themselves. Janis Joplin, Jim
Morrison . . . he wasn't the only one. It's like you have no basis anymore.
No foundation. And I think he was one of the first ones to go through it. It
was very lonely there, where he was. I know that."
Occasionally she visits Graceland. Those of Elvis' cooks who are still alive
will come in and prepare the same soul food for her they all used to eat
there: fried chicken, black-eyed peas, mashed potatoes, cornbread. And
she'll go upstairs. "Nothing has been touched," she says. "It's exactly the
same. There was a whole life in that house. It's a beautiful sadness. It's
either really painful or it's very comforting -- it goes either way. The
carpet is the same. My room is exactly the same. Nothing has been touched.
Upstairs, which has never been open to the public, is my room and his room,
next to each other, and an attic. It's pretty creepy. It's a shrine."
Usually she'll go up there alone. "It's very comforting for me," she says.
"The books, the videos, everything is there still. The Godfather, Citizen
Kane, Pink Panther, Bruce Lee -- all of his videos are still there. All of
his records." Early this year, Presley made a video, visited radio stations,
rehearsed and absorbed the early reactions to her record. "I'm sure it's
going to be a fifty-fifty thing: 'She sucks'; 'She's great,' " she says
after browsing some Internet sites, and laughs. " 'Go back to spending
Daddy's money' -- that's one I heard." It's strange being out in public like
this. "My guess," she says wryly, "is that I'll do this for a while and then
turn into a recluse again at some point."
Like everybody else, she saw Martin Bashir's interview with Michael Jackson.
"I watched it and cringed," she says. "I had the same reaction everybody
else had -- it was like watching a train wreck. It seemed like it was overly
cruel -- the guy [Bashir] had his agenda and was after him. I don't make a
habit of feeling bad for that guy [Jackson], because he kind of likes to
push that sympathy button sometimes, and I don't really go for it anymore,
but that time I did. I was, 'Oh, no, you really just got screwed.' It
honestly looked to me like, it would be like somebody walking into a
convalescent home and just antagonizing someone and having it on film the
whole time." ...
If you want to read the complete interview, go to this link
http://lisamarie.tripod.co.jp/lisa-RollingStoneCoverStory2003.htm