Lisa Marie Presley dies at 54, after a tumultuous life lived in the full glare of the spotlight

A tumultuous life lived in the full glare of the public spotlight was tragically cut short on Friday when the US musician Lisa Marie Presley died at home in California, aged 54, from a heart attack.

Lisa Marie Presley during her 2014 tour of Australia. Picture: Supplied

A tumultuous life lived in the full glare of the public spotlight was tragically cut short on Friday, Australian time, when the American singer-songwriter Lisa Marie Presley died at home in California, aged 54, from a heart attack.

In a statement, her distraught mother Priscilla Presley said: “The Presley family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Lisa Marie. They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time.”

Best known for two of her familial relationships – first as the only child of the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, Elvis Presley, then as the wife of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson – her blues-tinged voice also coloured three albums.

Lisa Marie Presley with her famous parents in 1970. Picture: Frank Carroll/Sygma

Her debut, 2003’s To Whom It May Concern, was issued alongside a fiery Rolling Stone cover story wherein the artist broke her longstanding public silence, having spent 35 years to that point being scrutinised even before she took her first breath.

Born in 1968, nine months after her parents married, she grew up at Graceland as a self-described forlorn child: “I was deep and kind of heavy and people thought I was really sad,” she said.

A sense of being surveilled developed early, as her father’s fans were regularly watching the family house from nearby woods. They would offer her money and their cameras to take photos of Elvis; the child would toss the camera and pocket the cash. He died when she was nine.

Of her 2003 debut album, she said: “You want to know who I am, and what I am, it’s in here. This is how either f..ked up I am, or crazy or deranged or stupid or whatever you want to call it. This is me, and it’s from me, and that’s the only reason I did it.”

In the same magazine profile, Presley described her first husband, the Chicago-born musician Danny Keough, as “my absolute best friend in the world. The smartest thing I’ve ever done is have children with this man, because I knew this is the one man I could be connected to for the rest of my life.”

Two decades later, those words would prove strangely and cruelly prophetic, for it was ­Keough who was with her at home in Calabasas, Los Angeles, until paramedics arrived and transported her to hospital.

The pair had two children together, a daughter named Riley in 1989, then a son named Benjamin in 1992, who died by suicide in 2020, aged 27.

Presley and Keough divorced in 1994, but their friendship endured; he lived in a guesthouse on her property, and he performed CPR on her after a housekeeper had found her unresponsive.

Lisa Marie Presley and Michael Jackson. Picture: Stephane Cardinale/Sygma via Getty Images

Mere weeks after their divorce, Presley married Michael Jackson, who was at the peak of his global fame and infamy, as child sexual abuse allegations concerning the singer were first reported in 1993.

She filed for divorce from Jackson in 1996, citing irreconcilable differences, and later went on to marry actor Nicolas Cage (2002) and musician Michael Lockwood (2006). The pair produced twin girls, Harper and Finley, in 2008, before divorcing in 2021.

Speaking with Rolling Stone in 2003, she said: “If you lined up all the men I’ve been with in a row, you’d think that I was completely psychotic.”