Lisa Marie Presley Recalls the Wildly Normal Childhood Event Dad Elvis Attended in Posthumous Memoir
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The late Lisa Marie Presley is opening up about her life with dad Elvis Presley in her posthumous memoir, and we can’t believe just how down-to-earth the larger-than-life rockstar was. According to the upcoming memoir — which was started by Lisa Marie and completed by her daughter Riley Keough after her tragic and untimely death last year — Elvis went to Lisa Marie’s parent-teacher conferences.
Her parent-teacher conferences!
The Elvis — who famously left the building — apparently entered schools to hear how his only child with wife Priscilla Presley was doing in class. In an excerpt of From Here to the Great Unknown obtained by People, Lisa Marie admitted that she would sometimes drive by her childhood school “just to remember the day [her] dad came to a parent-teacher conference.”
“I knew he was coming, and I couldn’t wait,” she said of the fateful day. “I could feel the teachers’ nervousness and excitement, too. My little student friends were so excited that I got even more excited — everybody was just running around crazy.”
(And we would probably be doing the same if we were said teachers and friends!)
“Then my dad showed up,” she continued. “He got out of the car and he had on a respectable outfit — black pants and some kind of blouse — but he was also wearing a big, majestic belt with buckles and jewels and chains, as well as sunglasses. He was smoking a cigar. I met him at the car, and I walked up the walkway with him, and I just remember that feeling of walking next to him, holding his hand.”
And now that checks out. We love that Elvis was peak-Elvis — “majestic” belt, jewels, sunglasses, and all! — when going to this conference. He had a cigar in one hand, his daughter’s in his other, and was showing up in a way we hope all dads can and do. But it’s so jarring to think of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll doing something so wildly normal.
In her memoir, Lisa Marie also discusses going to her dad’s shows and the pride she felt. “[It] was my favorite thing in the world.”
“He would take me by the hand and bring me out onstage, then get walked to wherever his place was on the stage, and I would be taken from him and brought to wherever I was going to be sitting in the audience,” she explained. “The electricity of those shows. There’s nothing I’ve felt that’s been even close to that feeling, ever. Electrifying is such a generic word, but it really is what it felt like. I loved watching him perform.”
When she requested her favorite songs like “Hurt” and “How Great Thou Art,” her dad always complied. But he also always embarrassed her.
“I did not, however, like having the limelight shone on me or being asked to stand up in front of everybody. In Vegas, during his residency, he introduced [his dad] Vernon, then looked toward me and I remember thinking, ‘Oh God oh God please don’t.'”
“Lisa, stand up!” he said.
So he was going to parent-teacher conferences, was wrapped around his little girl’s fingers, and was finding ways to make her cringe … turns out Elvis was way more of a “normal” dad than his celebrity would have led us to believe.