(Apr.10, 2003)

The Tonight Show With Jay Leno Lisa will be visiting Jay's sofa on May 1st.

(Apr.10, 2003)

The Late Show with Lisa Marie Presley Lisa Marie Presley performs during the taping of 'The Late Show with David Letterman' Wednesday, April 9, 2003 in New York. Presley performed on the same stage in The Ed Sullivan Theater, that her father, Elvis Presley, performed 46 years ago on the Ed Sullivan Show. (Lisa Interview)

(Apr.10, 2003)

MTV2's "Artist Favorites" Watch an hour of music videos hosted by Lisa Marie Presley. April 14, 5 pm ET April 15, 3 am ET April 16, 8 am ET April 17, 2 pm ET April 18, 10 am ET

Apr.9, 2003)

Lisa Marie Presley on MTV TRL MTV Studio, Times Square, NYC (4/8/2003)

(Apr.9, 2003)

Lisa Marie Presley performs at a New York Showcase prior to the release of Capitol Records"To Whom it May Concern". S.I.R. Studios, New York City (4/7/2003)

(Apr.8, 2003)

That's all right now, daughter April 8, 2003, Chicago Sun Times BY JIM DEROGATIS Pop Music Critic As her debut album, "To Whom It May Concern," arrives in stores today, Lisa Marie Presley proves she's inherited more than her father's famously brooding visage. If not quite the equal of Elvis' timeless growl, Lisa Marie's voice is a strong, bold instrument that is well deserving of a career in pop music. Presley is getting a late start as a singer at age 35, but she explains her longtime reluctance to appear in the spotlight by invoking the incredible pressures and expectations that come with being her father's daughter. Even now, the press is paying more attention to her personal life than to her music. In the cover story of the current Rolling Stone, Presley patiently deals with all of the gossip: her bout with drugs (it was short, she was young and it's over); her marriage to Michael Jackson (also short, also over and something she now describes as a result of being manipulated by Jackson's charming ways); her third marriage, to actor Nicolas Cage (another failure--it was true love, but they just couldn't live together), and her religion (Scientology is not a cult, she maintains, but something that helps her center herself). During a phone interview from her home in Los Angeles, I was more interested in talking about Presley's music. (Readers can always get the dirt elsewhere.) Q. You've always resisted baring your soul in public, yet you don't hold anything back in the lyrics on this album. You had to have had some trepidations about that. A. Not really, only because that whole process for me was to purge everything. It's coming from my gut, so I can't think like that--like, "I can't say this" or "I can't do that." I don't respond to music where people are not doing that, so I'm not going to write music where I'm not doing that. Q. There's so much artifice in pop music today. Is that something you wanted to avoid? A. Yeah. I definitely sensed that I was not going to work with anybody that was ever going to push me in any weird pop direction or cheese direction or something that people were expecting. I just knew--I just felt--who I was going to work with and who was gonna sort of go that way. The hardest part of this whole record for me was to go radio-friendly. There are a couple of songs that I knew needed to go on there because they would be safe. Otherwise, I would have done a whole alternative album. Q. Well, you've certainly got the rock 'n' roll attitude, and you're in a position where you could have done whatever you wanted. You could have recorded with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. You own a recording studio; have you ever done that sort of thing on your own? A. Right now, my thing is alternative. I'm sort of into that mode. But I didn't write a style. All I knew is that I liked ambience in a song and I liked a mood; that was what I would pull from to sing it. So a couple of the songs had to be bumped up a few notches. I could go completely the other way on the next record and just go, "Screw it." I'm not going to go safe anymore, that's it. It's a little like I'm walking on unknown territory when it's me trying to put out an album. I didn't really think of a style and try to be too contrived. I kind of made an eclectic album. Q. It's held together by your voice, and you're an impressive singer, but it took you a long time to get started. Do you enjoy singing? A. But I love the singing part, I love the creative part, I love all that stuff. It just comes to me, and it's like a purging thing--therapeutic. Q. Now you have to deal with the selling part of the process, which I gather you don't enjoy. A. That's where I'm having some trouble! [Laughs.] It's hard for me, and then I have to deal with all the other stuff [the gossip], which I'm very happy you're not asking about right now. But I'm sure you will. Q. Oh, hell no. I want to talk about music. A. Wow, thanks! The thing is, I've been doing these interviews, and I'm just hearing about my dad, Nic or Michael. Q. What I'd like to know about is the process of making this record. You're working with co-songwriters; how much of the song is you, and how does it work when you sit down with these hired pros? A. Usually I have an idea of what they've done before. I sit there, I wait, they play an instrument--I don't play enough of an instrument to be able to write; I listen and then I sort of go with it. I kind of just go, "OK, I'm gonna do this," and then I sort of go into this weird place where I do it. Every song on the record was written in about three hours. I like to walk into the studio and have it done or sketched out or just about done by the time I leave. It's kind of one of those things where I sit there and they follow my melody and we sort of collaborate with me humming and them playing, whatever it takes. Q. So you'll have the lyrics and a rough melodic idea? A. No, I usually have no lyrics; I usually go melodic first. Melody drives me always. Q. Then how much of the lyric actually comes from you? A. I wrote every single word on the album except for "The Road Between," which was a song that I had gotten from some guy that I thought was really cool. That was the only song I collaborated on the words with. Q. So this is definitely you talking about your life. I think listeners see names like Glen Ballard [Alanis Morrissette's producer] and Eric Rosse [Tori Amos] and they assume, "Those guys did the heavy lifting, and you just came in and sang." A. Yeah, exactly, and that upsets me. But this was a total collaboration, and only with the [instrumental] tracks mostly, because I can't play an instrument. That's where the real collaboration happened. Q. When do you know you've written a good song? A. That's usually when I watch other people. Most people around me know what I'm writing about because something in my life is happening and I'll go in and formulate it and come out with a song. So I watch the reactions. I know I like it, but then I kind of play it for people I trust, people around me, and if it affects them, I go, "Good." Q. I want to ask you one "dad" question, but not a cliched one. You and I are roughly the same age; one challenge for us Genera-tion X'ers and the Y's who followed is to be able to discover what was really cool about Elvis, and that's difficult when he's always there in commercial soundtracks, on elevator Muzak and the covers of the scandal sheets. We've been robbed of discovering the music on our own terms. A. That's like any song right now on pop radio. If you like the song, it's turned into a commodity and blown out of proportion and played 2 million times until you can't appreciate it anymore. That's the trouble with everything, and it's kind of the world we live in. Q. You grew up surrounded by Elvis' music; you must have taken it for granted. Was there a moment, a musical epiphany, when you said, "Now I get it!" A. You know, I like that [later] sad stuff, like "In the Ghetto." But it was just like I was being inspired over a long period of time. It wasn't like I heard one thing and said, "Ah, I'm gonna do that!" I don't really take it for granted. It's just the way this civilization is: If something's good, it gets blown up and then taken down and then blown up and taken down again until you can't appreciate it anymore. Everything becomes a commodity; it's just sort of the way American culture is, I guess. Q. There's talk of you doing a mid-sized theater tour. Where do you stand on the idea of getting up onstage and singing these songs? A. When I start getting out there and people are coming to see me because they like the record or they like me and it's for real, then I'll probably be a lot happier and have a lot more fun. But right now I feel either the nervousness or the skepticism. I've only done two big shows, and the second was "Good Morning America" on national television. I'm not having a runway; that's the big problem! I'd like to warm up first. Q. You could go play some L.A. dive like the Viper Room on a Monday night. A. That's what I wanted! The record company had other ideas. They're doing a pretty good job with me, I just think that the one thing they forgot was to let me go out and get my feet wet first. But it was like, "This is the release date," and BAM!, everything just went full-throttle. But it's OK, I haven't been thrown in the fire too much. There's no cause for 'Concern' about making a mockery of family name To her credit, Elvis' daughter has spent much of her life fending off the forces that would turn her into a pop commodity. Now, entering the music world at age 35, she tries to maintain a measure of the strong will and complex, contrary personality that we've glimpsed behind the gossipy headlines. But she only succeeds to a point. While somewhat limited in range, Presley has a powerful voice: smoky, sexy and sultry, the aural equivalent of Dad's brooding pout and curled-lip sneer. She can't match the heartbreaking romantic appeal of the sweet Elvis, but she's certainly nailed the black-leather King: No one besides Courtney Love could have as much fun spitting out the cuss words on the rollicking opener, "S.O.B." Presley doesn't hold much back in her lyrics, railing against men who can't hold their own in a relationship with a strong woman (several tunes seem to be directed at ex-husbands Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage) and the way that a prying media can trivialize genuine emotion. (The first single, "Lights Out," is a poignant evocation of her father's ghost, inspired by her recollections of the mood at Graceland the day he died.) Unfortunately, the gilded, overblown production (by Capitol president Andy Slater, Eric Rosse and Glenn Ballard) tends to distance Presley from the soul of the tunes, especially on the requisite power ballads. The goal was clearly to position her in Sheryl Crow sunshine-pop territory, with a bit more of a country lilt. But her personality and her vocal instrument are much better suited to darker, bluesier terrain. As with Wynona Judd, you find yourself longing to hear Lisa Marie in a sparer, grittier juke-joint/biker-bar setting, belting out her songs of angst and love lost between shots of tequila while fronting a small, tight combo of sweating rockers. Here's hoping that on the next album she'll do exactly that.

(Apr.8, 2003, Thanks to Chris)

(TORONTO - APRIL 7, 2003 - 6:20 PM ET) Lisa has postponed Toronto tour. MuchMoreMusic has confirmed this hour that Lisa Marie Presley has decided to postpone this week's Toronto promotional visit, featuring her first LIVE appearance on Canadian television in an exclusive edition of the MUCHMOREMUSIC LIVE series. Lisa Marie Presley has postponed her Toronto trip to The MIX Thursday April 10th, 2003. Lisa Marie Presley will reschedule her visit to the MIX studios in the near future. Keep listening to MIX 99.9 for details! A statement issued through Presley's representatives is as follows: "Due to the recent travel warnings issued by the World Health Organization, Lisa Marie Presley has decided to suspend her international travel. She is disappointed to cancel her trip, but is looking forward to rescheduling the dates in the future."

(Apr.6, 2003)

Lisa In Concert at the Rose Bowl on May 17 KIIS FM Announces Wango Tango Lineup The lineup for KIIS FM's big annual Wango Tango event was announced today. The artist performing include Christina Aguilera, Lisa Marie Presley, Daniel Bedingfield, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Michelle Branch, *NSYNC star JC Chasez, and O-Town

(Apr.6, 2003)

Lisa Marie will grace Canada with her royal presence. The singer - whose sound definitely leans towards the rock side of the musical spectrum - will be in Toronto next week for a series of promo appearances. She'll be co-hosting the MIX 99 morning show in Toronto at 8 a.m. on April 10, but she's also doing all sorts of national stuff, so the rest of the country will get a chance to see her in action. That same day she'll be on MuchMusic's Much On Demand (at 5:40 p.m. ET) and will do a full hour interview with Bill Welychka at 8 p.m. ET on MuchMoreMusic. Finally, she'll be on Open Mike With Mike Bullard on April 11. Actually, if you turn on your television at all over the course of the next week, you'll likely catch a glimpse of Lisa Marie.

(Apr.6, 2003)

A name for herself Fear and family kept Lisa Marie Presley away from the microphone -- until now. By Robert Hilburn, L.A. Times Dressed casually in sweater and loose-fitting sweat pants, Lisa Marie Presley takes her place behind the microphone in a nondescript rehearsal studio in North Hollywood and looks out at the couple of dozen friends on hand to cheer her. It's supposed to be a moment of celebration, but the atmosphere is tense. Remarkably, this is the first time she has sung before a live audience -- and she's petrified. All her previous singing has been in the safety of recording studios. As her six-piece band begins playing, she takes a deep breath and starts moving slowly with the music. You hear the voice, but it's hard to concentrate on anything but her. When she slowly turns her face to the left, you see the pouty good looks and quick smile of her father. When she turns to the right, there are the gorgeous cheekbones and seductive eyes of her mother, actress-businesswoman Priscilla Presley. At 35, as she prepares to launch her first album, the question is whether the pop world will be so caught up in the Presley persona that it will never be able to see her as more than a novelty. Her story now involves far more than music. It's a fierce struggle for identity. Presley knows that every story written about her -- even her obituary -- will probably include the names Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson. So the daughter of rock's greatest star is out to claim a piece of that obituary for herself. After years of being intimidated by the legacy of her father, she is hoping to have a recording career -- and her goal is to prove that there is more to her than her birthright and ex-marriage partners. "I'm not doing this to be a pop star," says Presley, pausing to reflect the week before the performance. "I've had plenty of money and attention. I'm doing it for credibility." It's only natural to scoff at such a lofty ambition, especially given the oddball turns in her private life (marrying Michael Jackson -- hello!) and the image many probably have of her as a pampered rich girl. But the 5-foot-2 Memphis native is serious and disarmingly open during a break at the studio. The music on her upcoming album, too, has a stark, uncompromising tone. Her lyrics speak about disillusionment and regrets, sometimes blaming others for the failure of relationships, sometimes herself. "I really went back through a lot of the dark corridors of my life in this record," she says softly, far more vulnerable in person than the poised, self-assured presence of her new music video. "I wanted people to know who I am based on my music, not on what they read in the tabloids." The response so far has been encouraging. Her debut single -- "Lights Out," a stark look at life with the weight of the Presley legacy -- has been embraced on pop radio, and a video of the song is a hit on VH1. But the final test is on stage, where she must show she's not relying on studio tricks on the album. In her intimate North Hollywood show, she proves herself easily. With music that leans more to hard-edged pop -- the sound of, say Alanis Morissette -- than the rockabilly drive of "Hound Dog," her voice demonstrates character and conviction on the introspective tunes. Her friends rush forward after the half-hour set to offer congratulations. She thanks them but looks pale. She edges her way to the rear of the room, saying she was so nervous on stage she almost threw up. Then, barely finishing the sentence, she rushes out the back door, her hand over her mouth. "Try to put yourself in her position," Priscilla Presley says when told about her daughter's nervousness. "Ever since she started talking about a recording career when she was 16 or 17, I warned her the doors will open because of who she is, but they will close just as fast. We've all seen the flashes in the pan in this town, and she knew she had to be ready because she would only have one chance to prove herself. This is it." Shunning the free ride Elvis' daughter could have taken the easy way out. She inherited her father's fortune (now estimated at $250 million to $300 million) when she was 30, so she could just live the good life behind mansion gates. If she only craved attention, she could have gone on the Home Shopping Network, hawking Elvis souvenirs, or made the endless rounds of TV talk shows. Presley, however, didn't cut corners. She backed away from a record contract a decade ago because she didn't think she was ready as an artist. Even after finally signing with EMI Records in 1998, she spent countless hours in the studio, writing songs and getting her sound down, before green-lighting the album, titled "To Whom It May Concern," that hits stores Tuesday. Through the years of waiting, she kept pretty much out of sight. Thanks to computer media searches, you can find hundreds of interviews and photographs of even the most marginal star. But there's precious little on Lisa Marie Presley -- fewer celeb photos in a lifetime than, say, the Hilton sisters, Nicky and Paris, generate in a month. Presley laughs at the mention of the Hilton hotel heiresses, who seem to do little other than go to celebrity parties. "Those two are the epitome of what my mother raised me not to be," she says, sitting on a battered sofa in the studio. "I don't know what they've done. Maybe it's the bleach that fascinates people. When I read an article about them, I showed it to my mom and said, 'This is exactly what you were trying so hard to make me not be and thank you.' " If Presley now seems to be popping up all over the place, from the cover of Rolling Stone this week to a Diane Sawyer TV interview that ABC has been promoting ever since the Grammys, you might cut her some slack. We really haven't heard anything from her for the past three decades. She spent much of her time in the '90s being a mom and doing volunteer work for groups including the World Literacy campaign. She also served as chairwoman of the board of Elvis Presley Enterprises, which runs Graceland. "I had no reason to do interviews before," she says a week before the dress rehearsal. "The only thing I could talk about was my fame or my parents. Why the hell would I go out and do that?" Though her mood is much lighter than at the public rehearsal, Presley is shy and reserved. She smiles nervously when introduced, and she tends to avoid eye contact. So it's surprising when she eventually proves strong-willed and disarmingly open about her personal life. It's as if she wants people to know her rather than her image, so she has to open up in her music and in interviews. Nothing contributed more to her tabloid fodder than the 1994 marriage to Jackson, and no question is asked more than "Why?" Even in trying to be candid, she finds it hard to settle on an answer, though in Rolling Stone, for instance, she talks enough about Jackson alone to fill a page. She felt sorry for him, especially after the child-abuse accusations came out, and was protective. And, yes, she said, they had sex. But she also points out that things got "ugly" at the end -- that he would sometimes disappear for weeks at a time. In the rehearsal studio, it's clear that she regards the marriage as a horrible mistake. She says her first husband, musician Danny Keough, is still a close friend. But that's not the case with Jackson. What about the recent documentaries on Jackson? Does she feel sorry for all the public ridicule? "I did see the British program, and it does look like he was set up," she responds. "But, no, I could never feel sorry for Michael Jackson." Trials of love One senses that Lisa Marie's highly publicized romantic trials have had much to do with the weight of being a Presley. The young mother of two was devastated by the breakup of her marriage to Keough, which she clearly does blame on the Presley pressures. "Even if you have talent, which Danny does, you immediately becomes Mr. Presley in the world's eyes, and it eventually tore the marriage apart," she says. She pauses and looks around the room at the empty stage. "That has been a constant problem for me," she says, pursuing the thought. "If I'm going with a musician, they become Mr. Presley and they get squashed and they get resentful and we end up going after each other. After Danny, I thought maybe I should be with someone who is famous. I married Michael." After that, she fell in love with another musician, John Oszajca. The singer-songwriter made a creditable album for Interscope in 2000, and one of the tracks, "Bisexual Chick," picked up a lot of airplay on alt-rock kingpin KROQ-FM in Los Angeles. But the Presley family ties were everywhere. In reviewing the album, Rolling Stone took only seven words before making the connection to Lisa Marie. Entertainment Weekly needed 11. When that relationship ended, Presley again seemed to turn to someone who had a strong identity of his own -- actor Nicolas Cage. The marriage last year lasted just three months. "Given our backgrounds, I thought we would be very compatible," she says. "It turned out we are two pirates, basically." Finally, she realized she had to break the cycle. "I saw myself ricocheting back and forth," she says. "I decided to call timeout. I figure I'll devote all my energy to my children and my career." Slow to sing Shock may be too strong a word, but there certainly was much surprise in the pop world when "Lights Out," the first piece of music from Presley, turned out to be good. A lot of pop offspring, from Arlo Guthrie to Jakob Dylan, overcame pop skepticism to make the charts, but perhaps none has faced such a credibility hurdle as Elvis' daughter. Fully aware of that pressure, Presley didn't even tell her friends that she wanted to be a singer until she was in her 20s. Singer-songwriter Keough says they had been married more than two years before Presley declared she wanted to be a singer. He converted their dining room into a practice studio and they started writing together around 1990. "I'd play chords and Lisa would come up with melodies, and after a few weeks she started writing down a lot of lyrics," Keough says now. "From the start, her voice carried that quality that makes you feel better. It was very real. No posturing." She was so excited with the results that she turned to Jerry Schilling, an old family friend who managed the Beach Boys for years, and asked him in the early '90s to see if he could get her a record deal. "Actually, she first asked me to look into some acting jobs for her," says the former Memphis native, who drove Elvis and Priscilla to the hospital the day Lisa Marie was born. "She thought that might be the easiest path. I mentioned music, and she didn't want to hear about it. That's how afraid she was of it at the time. "So, I was surprised when she called one day and said, 'I think I can sing.' " Schilling talked to Tommy Mottola, then head of Sony Music, and Sony's Epic division soon offered Presley a contract. But she backed out when she learned she was pregnant with her second child, Benjamin. (The couple's daughter, Danielle, was born in 1989.) "I don't think I was ready," Presley says now. "I think I was freaking out. Once I got pregnant, there was no way." Her career didn't really get back on track until she agreed to sing a song at a Graceland-sponsored tribute to her father in 1997. Rather than perform live, she came up with the idea of making a video in which she would sing along with her father's recording of "Don't Cry Daddy." She had already resumed writing, largely inspired by Alanis Morissette's deeply introspective album "Jagged Little Pill," which dealt with many of the issues of relationships and self-evaluation that interested her. She contacted Glen Ballard, the record producer and songwriter who worked with Morissette on the album, and feeling a rapport with him, signed with his EMI-affiliated Java Records label in the summer of 1998. Together, they wrote "Lights Out," the song about the weight of the Presley legacy. In the key line, she speaks about seeing the family gravesite at Graceland and noticing a spot left for her. That's where my family's buried and gone Last time I was there I noticed a space left Next to them there in Memphis In the damn back lawn. About their time together at Java, Ballard says, "When she played me a couple of things she had written, they were extremely dark, not what I expected at all. But I told her that if she was going to achieve her goal of being a good writer she was going to have to work at it every day -- that there were no shortcuts. And she understood that." It's this seriousness that also impressed manager Scooter Weintraub. "A lot of people are interested in everything that goes along with music -- being on MTV or having a hit single. But Lisa Marie wanted something more." Yet the album recording didn't go easily. Presley worked with various producers on the project, but it still wasn't finished in 2000 when Andy Slater took over as president of EMI-owned Capitol Records and inherited the project. "I was impressed when I read the lyrics," says Slater, who made a reputation in the industry as manager of the Wallflowers, Fiona Apple and Macy Gray. "I felt this was someone who was facing the real issues of her life, but I couldn't find the soul of the artist in the record." He met with Presley, who shared some of her concerns about the sound of some of the tracks. "I saw in her the person I heard in these songs," he said. "I told her I wanted her to stay on Capitol, but I wanted to make the album all over." Slater then put her together with Eric Rosse, who had produced two albums for Tori Amos. Except for "Lights Out," which Slater ended up producing, Rosse produced the rest of the album. Keough is delighted with the result. "With every step of this product, Lisa has become more and more confident, more the person she was meant to be. It is amazing to watch," he says. 'I never really fit' No one is more thrilled with Presley's musical breakthrough than her mother, who spent many anxious years wondering if her daughter would ever tame her rebellious streak. Priscilla had tried to give Lisa Marie stability, but it was often a struggle because the young girl was so devoted to her dad. After her parents' divorce in 1973, she spent time with Elvis at Graceland when he wasn't on tour, the rest of the time with her mom in Los Angeles. Elvis spoiled Lisa Marie in every way, leaving Priscilla as the one to bring some reality and discipline into her life. Lisa Marie was 9 when her father died, and when she began acting out and experimenting with drugs, Priscilla sent her to a series of private schools, including a boarding school in Ojai. "I was kind of a loner, a melancholy and strange child," Lisa Marie says. "I had a real self-destructive mode for a while. I never really fit into school. I didn't really have any direction." She credits Scientology with helping her break from drugs and start building some self-esteem. Though many celebrities seem reluctant to talk about the organization, Presley shows no anxiety when asked what she has gotten out of Scientology. "It is a form of self-help, self-discovery," she says. "It's not so much a God thing. It's nondenominational. It offered answers to questions I had about life. In the most basic way, it's like Humpty Dumpty. When I fell off the wall, they helped put me back together." She met Keough through Scientology and married him after learning she was pregnant in 1988. From the dark tone of her album, it's easy to suspect a lot of relationships in Presley's life were either mistakes or ended in heartbreak. In one song on "To Whom It May Concern," she says: "How many roads between your world and mine? How many broken doors and how many fights?" But it's wrong, she says, to think her life has been as consistently downbeat as the album. "I am inspired to write when I am going through a difficult period," she says, explaining how she draws in her songs from her own experience. "Writing is almost therapeutic for me. I wasn't born into a normal situation, and my life hasn't been textbook normal. But that doesn't mean my life has been 90% darkness just because the songs are." One piece of light in her life is her children. She even devotes a song ("So Lovely") to them on the album. "Through everything, they hold me together," she says. "I can understand when people say they love their children so much it's almost painful. There's the fear of loss. It probably started with me when I was a kid. There was so much experience with death and loss ... especially after my father. It's not something that ever leaves you." Today, says Presley, who lives in a gated community in Calabasas, "I'm basically a homebody." She's not a big movie or TV fan but does enjoy reading ("I'm riveted by 'Memoirs of a Geisha' "). "My favorite thing is to sit around with friends, maybe some wine. It's probably something I inherited from my father. He loved being on stage, but he didn't need attention all the time. "There was something really humble about him. He enjoyed being at Graceland with the people close to him. I loved being around Graceland. I hated leaving. I haven't read the bios about him because I knew him. I don't need to know what other people thought he was like. "There's still a lot of sadness when I think of Graceland. That's partly what 'Lights Out' is about. There were so many deaths. Once he died, my grandmother died, then my grandfather, my aunt, my uncle. My God. It was like the house had lost its life." Into the spotlight Two days after the dress rehearsal in North Hollywood, Presley flew to Orlando, Fla., where she performed some songs from the album before 1,500 retailers at a music business convention. On the phone the day after the show, she was upbeat -- looking forward to beginning her first U.S. tour this summer. "I felt a lot more comfortable on stage," she says. "I think the reason I was so nervous at the rehearsal was because my friends were there. I knew everybody in the room, and they all knew how important this is to me. I suddenly realized that all the dreaming is over. "I'm on stage," she says, "and I'm singing my songs." Personal favorites Lisa Marie Presley loves rock 'n' roll -- and, of course, the music of her dad. Favorite Album Ever: Pink Floyd's "The Wall" "I think it's brilliant, the music, the lyrics. I identified at a very young age with the way the album dealt with the struggle with authority, the pressures you go through while growing up, including school." Favorite Recent Album: Beck's "Sea Change" "It's so soulful and honest. You believe every word in the album." Best Live Act: Marilyn Manson "I was expecting a freak show type of thing when I went to see him, but the show was so brilliant visually that my jaw dropped. He's a true performance artist. I think the man is a genius." Best Singer: Jeff Buckley "I think he was some kind of angel. His voice sure made him sound like one." Favorite Elvis Records: The later ones "I like so many of them, but more the stuff from the late '60s and '70s than the '50s stuff. I've been listening a lot to the '70s box set that is out now. There is a song called 'Mary in the Morning' that I love. But also love 'In the Ghetto' and 'Suspicious Minds' because I used to see him do those all the time. There's also a live version of 'How Great Thou Art?' that is just amazing." A link to the legacy "To Whom It May Concern" (Capitol) "Lights Out," this album's marvelous first single, has the sweeping melodic hook and gutsy, blues-tinged vocal to be the hit that it is regardless of who made it. But the fact that Elvis' daughter is talking about her own link to the Presley legacy makes it one of the most hauntingly personal songs we'll hear this year. Not everything else on the album keeps pace. Presley, who wrote virtually all the lyrics, reexamines painful relationships in many of the songs, and some of them ("S.O.B.," "The Road Between") work well. Others lack the revelation (though not anger or drama) to make us share her emotions. Things tend to be stronger when she steps away from relationship traumas, as on "So Lovely," an ode to her two children, and the title song, expressing alarm over the careless prescription of antidepressants for teens. Presley works in a hard-edged pop-rock style, broad enough for a trace of the country and blues that inspired her dad. But the music here in no way leans on Elvis. In "To Whom It May Concern," Presley wants to pass the credibility test, and she does. -- Robert Hilburn

(Apr.5, 2003) (Apr.4, 2003) (Apr.1, 2003)

CHAT WITH LISA MARIE PRESLEY Chat with Lisa on chat.msn.com on 4/4 at 4:30 PST Transcript

(Apr.5, 2003)

Lisa Marie Presley's 'very proud of who I am, where I come from' By Michael Lollar, The Commercial Appeal, April 4, 2003 Lisa Marie Presley's album release Tuesday will be the first in what she said is a three-album contract and will include a tour that includes Memphis, but don't expect a new husband to accompany her. "I don't know where that's coming from," Presley said Thursday of talk that she plans to remarry her first husband, rock musician Danny Keough. "Danny is my best friend, always has been, always will be. I love him unconditionally, but we are not together. It's not like that," said Presley in an interview with The Commercial Appeal in which she talked about everything from the gravesite awaiting her at Graceland to the belief that Scientology might have saved her father. Presley, 35, said she is happy most early reviews of her first album, "To Whom It May Concern," are good, often comparing her smoky, husky voice to Cher's. The pop-rock album is like a checklist of personal songs dealing with Elvis Presley (Lights Out), to Elvis's Memphis Mafia to failed marriages. She also expects her share of bad reviews. "I'm waiting for the bad (reviews). I'm terrible like that," she said of the "dark outlook" that finds its way into her lyrics. It is a cynicism she can't explain: "I just was overly sensitive (while growing up). I felt more, was aware of more, too much probably too soon. I was exposed to a lot right off the bat, walked a different path around a lot of different things. . . . It's just kind of the way the mop flops." That outlook found its way into the current issue of Rolling Stone in which Presley talked candidly about her second marriage to pop star Michael Jackson. She called him "manipulative, calculating" and says it was a real marriage but that she came away feeling like he used her. Her third marriage, to actor Nicolas Cage, ended when he filed for divorce with eventual behind-the-scenes name-calling. She was "spoiled." He was a "hothead." In spite of her father's destructive lifestyle, Presley said she has no qualms about music - at least for her three-album deal. Notoriously reclusive, she will have to adapt to appearances night after night before live audiences. "I absolutely can do that for a while. I'll need to break it up because I have the children." Presley said her daughter, Danielle, 13, and son, Ben, 10, both seem destined for music careers too. "I see it, definitely. I see a deep ear for it and drive toward it on both ends. It's similar to what I had as a child, not wanting to play with my friends and listening to records all the time. I see it in their blood." For her, her father's unprecedented celebrity status has often been described as a curse, but she doesn't see it that way. "No, I don't. I'm very proud of who I am, where I come from." Presley said one of her favorite items that she keeps close to her at all times is a makeup-travel bag used by her father. "I keep that around with all of his personal items - the usual stuff, hair dye, toothbrush and all that stuff . . ." In the song most closely related to her father, Presley writes about the empty gravesite beside her father on "the damn back lawn" at Graceland. She's not sure whether it will be her eventual resting place. "I just saw that it was absolutely there. There are no written-in-stone plans for anything." Presley said she was introduced to Scientology through her mother, who met actor John Travolta and "asked him what he does to keep himself somewhat sane." Priscilla Presley "went in the next day. I went in the day after." It was an effort to get her to give up drugs during her teenage years. "I immediately felt comfortable with it." Travolta said Scientology might have saved Elvis, and Lisa Marie thinks it could have helped. "Yeah, of course, it brings sanity and explains a lot. And I think he was looking, searching." Elvis had other problems, including the close-knit group that often stayed with him at Graceland, and, just before and after his death, wrote tell-all books. "I think they were upset that they didn't get what they wanted. . . . They were wanting something out of a will, something out of his soul. They were just sycophants, little leeches, and they all turned on him and betrayed him. I hate them." Presley said the album tour, to begin in May, will come to Memphis, but she doesn't know when. "The only thing I can say is if I can move people, if I can play for somebody I admire and they like it, then I'm happy. I'm just trying to be a damned artist. "The hardest part for me is I just don't like attention on me or being the focus of attention. That's a hell of a road to walk, but on the other side of it I'm more proud of it this way. I can hold my head up a little bit higher." Truth is: Travolta didn't get the truth By John Beifuss, The Commercial Appeal, April 4, 2003 Travolta, who was in Atlanta during our phone interview, said he got involved in Scientology while trying to cope with the sudden, surprise success of Saturday Night Fever, which transformed him from a popular TV actor to a rock and roll-level superstar. That was in 1977, the year Elvis died. Shortly thereafter, Travolta turned the King's widow onto Scientology, he said. "After Elvis died, Priscilla Presley wanted to meet me. She was looking for some answers. She was just curious why some make it and some don't. I don't mean in show business, I mean personally. "She wanted to know how I survived all this fame stuff, and she asked me about Scientology. I think she even asked that question, 'Do you think if he (Elvis) had had this, he would have survived?' And I said yes." Priscilla almost immediately connected with Scientology, the religious-philosophical movement founded by the late L. Ron Hubbard that attempts to help people achieve their "infinite potential." Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis and Priscilla, also is an adherent of Scientology, as are such other famous entertainers as Tom Cruise, Juliette Lewis and Memphis musician Isaac Hayes. "I see Lisa Marie about three times a year, and see her mom about twice a year," Travolta said. "Lisa Marie's kind of like my surrogate daughter. She always asks me about the guys she gets involved with."

(Apr.4, 2003)

'Lisa in Japan' movie (quick time movie)

(Apr.4, 2003)

From Graceland to Neverland Lisa Marie Presley’s Wild Ride April 3 - She's the daughter of the King, the ex-wife of the King of Pop, and she has two other failed marriages behind her. But now, Lisa Marie Presley is finding her own voice. Presley is about to release her long-awaited debut album, To Whom It May Concern. The lyrics she wrote are raw and bruising, and reflect her journey from Graceland to Neverland and back. "I've been through a lot of stuff," Presley said, and her album reflects it. Among those painful experiences - the death of her famous father and a string of heartbreaks. Her album is coming out just a few months after her marriage to Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage crashed and burned - after a mere 108 days. But for many, the oddest thing about Presley's troubled marital track record is her 1994 union with Michael Jackson. Presley told ABCNEWS' Diane Sawyer that she was in love with Jackson. She literally fell under his spell, she said. "When he wants to lock into you, when he wants to intrigue you or capture you, or you know, whatever he wants to do with you, he can do it," Presley said in a Primetime interview. "I fell into this whole, 'You poor, sweet, misunderstood man, I'm going to save you.' … I fell in love with him." Marriage to Michael Presley recalls that her mother was shocked and upset by her marriage to Jackson. It was a typical mother-daughter thing, she said: "'Oh, you don't like him? Good. He's going to be my husband' … It was terrible." Priscilla Presley suggested that the marriage might have been Jackson's way of deflecting attention from a sex-abuse scandal swirling around him. The singing superstar had been accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy. He was never charged, and a civil suit filed by the boy's family was settled out of court. Presley defended Jackson fiercely at the time of the scandal, and she told Sawyer she never felt uncomfortable when he was around her two children from her first marriage. She said Jackson had a great connection with kids. "He had something with children. Not a bad, perverted, weird thing. I didn't pick it up as that. They responded to him. He responded to them," she said. And Presley says she found herself sexually attracted to Jackson. "I'm not attracted to mediocrity or normalcy or things like that," she said. She says that for all Jackson's eccentricities, she found him surprisingly normal. "He was very quick to, the first time I met him, sit me down and go, 'Listen, I'm not gay, and I know you think this, I know you think that,' and started cursing, started, you know, being a normal person, and I was like, 'Wow.' " She told Sawyer, "I fell in love with him, I did." But eventually, Presley said, she began to ask Jackson questions that he didn't like. She wouldn't reveal what those questions were, but said, "I started to just kind of wake up after a while. I was kind of sleeping, I guess." Their relationship went really sour, Presley said. "And it got pretty ugly at the end. It wasn't pretty, but I don't want to get into it." Presley filed for divorce in January 1996, barely 20 months into the marriage. Shaking Things Up Her marriage to Cage would be of even shorter duration. Presley told Sawyer that the two were truly in love, but were unable to maintain a stable emotional relationship. They were together for two years, though their marriage lasted less than four months. "We honestly were joking, thinking we are like the new millennium version of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor at this point. I mean we are going to knock each other off," Presley said. Presley said she's attracted to artists. "I like when someone's shaking it up, when they're different. I don't know why. I'll never know why. But it's just what I get attracted to." This, she said, has probably led her to marry men with whom she has had particularly dramatic affairs. Presley and Cage married, hoping it would control their explosiveness. It didn't. Presley said she and Cage are both emotionally dramatic people. Before they were married their notorious fight on a boat trip resulted in Presley's $65,000 engagement ring being flung into the ocean. Presley said she didn't throw the ring, but said Cage didn't throw it either. The couple called in divers to find the ring, but it was never recovered. Cage bought her another ring. But their marriage proved no less volatile. After a fight, Cage threatened to file for divorce - and did. "The most upsetting thing," Presley said, "was when he called to say he was sorry, wish he hadn't done it, things like that." Presley added: "You can't have a temper tantrum and then call me four days later and expect, you know, everything to be fine again … so, it was like that … We were both like two 12-year-olds in a sandbox, basically." She doesn't doesn't blame the failed marriage on Cage. She said they're both at fault and that they continue to talk with each other. A Family Unit Presley says that when it comes to picking men, she's "completely insane." Although, she said, there were "a few good ones" - particularly, Danny Keough, whom she married when she was 20. The marriage lasted 5.5 years. She and Keough are both Scientologists and have two children together. He's co-written some of her songs, and the two remain close, despite the divorce. In a song on her new album, Presley sings, "I broke up my family, and the guilt is never gone." She says Keough remains her best friend and that he stays with their children - 14-year-old Danielle Riley and 11-year-old Benjamin Storm - when Presley's out of town. "We keep that unit very in order, no matter how crazy we are," she said. Graceland and Fried Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwiches Presley herself came from a broken home - her parents divorced before her 6th birthday, and her father died when she just 9. After his death, Presley was raised by her mother, Priscilla. She says she's the polar opposite of her mom - a rebel, to her mom's demure and soft-spoken personality. As a teen, she rebelled with drugs. But her mom put her into The Castle, a Scientology center in Hollywood, to get her off drugs. It worked, and Presley said she's been drug-free since she was 17. Presley said she doesn't usually talk about her father, because she doesn't want to be seen as capitalizing on his image. She said Elvis' sprawling Memphis estate, Graceland, still feels like home when she visits, but that it's "like a time capsule." "Nothing's been touched. It's kind of a sad thing. The life that existed there at one time, and the history, and there was so much life." Much of that life involved her father's self-destruction before her eyes. She said she remembers her father as a loving and very exciting dad, but said she felt a need to take care of him. No, she said, she never had Elvis' legendary fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches as a kid. She said she never saw her dad eat them either. "I never saw him eat one of those, to be honest with you, and I finally just had one, like, I took a bite about a year ago." One thing she did see was her father taking handfuls of pills. But, Presley who was only 9 when her father died in 1977, said she didn't know what they were. She remembers his erratic behavior and how he'd try to pull himself together when he saw her. "If I was watching TV in my room," she said Elvis would sort of "stumble to my doorway, and he'd start to fall and I had to go catch him." She thinks her father was surrounded by people who were "taking him down basically, taking his dignity away." In her song, "Nobody Noticed It," she writes about it. "He was obviously crying out for help. So, what is the point in, you know, trying to take away his dignity and cashing in on it, you know and getting attention for that. It's disgusting. I hope they rot in hell." The Wild Child Grows Up Now that she's embarked on a recording career, Presley expects there will be comparisons between her and her father - especially the way her upper lip moves into a defiant snarl, just Elvis' did. "I've seen it," she said. "But it's not something that I've tried to do … But it's not like I'm trying to fight it either, but I can definitely see it." Now 35, Presley said she's abandoned her tendency for impulsive marriages. She's focusing on her music, and hopes that people will think that it's good, and find that she actually has a talent that's all her own. As far as her happiness and imagining a perfect day for herself, Presley said, "It doesn't take much for me to be a perfect day. As long as there's not divorce involved in it. I'm fine."

(Apr.2, 2003)

Liz Smith 'Primetime' Presley April 2, 2003 'A man is a God in ruins" said Ralph Waldo Emerson. I'll say. TOMORROW night at 10, provided that U.S. troops aren't entering Baghdad, we'll see Lisa Marie Presley talking super-candidly with Diane Sawyer about her controversial marriage to Michael Jackson, her recent quickie marriage and divorce from actor Nicolas Cage, and some memories of Graceland and dear old Dad. Lisa Marie's chatfest is to promote her first foray into music, a CD of personal songs she wrote, titled "To Whom It May Concern." This won't be the first time Lisa Marie sits across from Sawyer, who interviewed her in a mind-bending hour back when she and Jackson were still man and wife. Asked now by Diane if she was physically attracted to Mi- chael when they met, Presley says: "I'm not attracted to normalcy or things like that ... I'm weird. I don't know. I'm whacked." Lisa Marie also tells as much, or as little, as she wants about the incident wherein she was reported to have thrown a $65,000 ring from Cage into the ocean: "I was not the one that threw it. It did go in the water ... and it was more than $65,000." When Sawyer says, "OK, so he [Cage] threw it," Lisa Marie counters, "I didn't say that. I just said I didn't throw it." She did ask divers to come in and try to find the ring. "I'm the one that said 'You better get a goddamned diver here now. I wasn't going to leave until they tried." Presley confirms that Cage bought her another ring. "Bigger?" asks Sawyer. "Uh-huh, yeah!" says Presley. And there are also never-before-seen home movies and photographs of the Presley family for Graceland fans. Some excerpts of this "Primetime" airing can also be seen tomorrow morning on "Good Morning America." Oh yes, about those legendary Elvis peanut butter and banana sandwiches, Lisa Marie says, "I never saw him eat one of those, to be honest with you, and I finally just had one. I took a bite about a year ago." She doesn't say whether or not she became addicted.

(Apr.1, 2003)

From Elvis to Lisa Marie April 01, 2003 In addition to each being nominated for Academy Awards this year, NICOLAS CAGE, JULIANNE MOORE and RENE ZELLWEGER have something else in common. The three are the subject of an hourlong "Barbara Walters Special." Originally scheduled to air the same evening as the 75th Academy Awardsｮ, the chat fest instead broadcasts tonight at 10 p.m. on ABC. In it, Nic talks for the first time about his marriage to LISA MARIE PRESLEY, his difficult childhood and his reported obsession with Lisa's father, ELVIS PRESLEY. "I was wondering how I could bring up the sensitive subject of his brief marriage to Lisa Marie and he brought it up," Barbara tells ET. "It was as if he wanted to say it once and for all. He says he still loves, and misses, her." The Academy Award nominee for 'Adaptation' also gave Barbara a tour of his home, which was previously owned by Rat Packer DEAN MARTIN, and then by the hip-swivelin' TOM JONES. "I went all through Nicolas' beautiful house," the reporter states. "There is no memorabilia of Elvis. There are no pictures, no statuettes, nothing. That is a myth that happened because he did two movies about Elvis. Yes, he did marry Elvis' daughter but because they had things in common, not because she was Elvis' daughter." Additionally, Nic wanted it made clear that the reports of his obsession with Graceland were also greatly exaggerated. "Lisa Marie and I weren't going to buy Graceland," he tells Barbara. "We were never going to live in Graceland, I wasn't going to build Graceland for her on top of a ranch somewhere. There is no answering machine with my voice on it as Elvis. When I saw Lisa, she was this beautiful girl, not Elvis' daughter." ABC-TV, "Barbara Walters Special" Tuesday, April 1, 10pm ET

(Apr.1, 2003)

LISA MARIE PRESLEY A DIANE SAWYER PRIMETIME TELEVISION EVENT Thursday, April 3 (Was rescheduled for April 10, but is now back to its originally announced airdate.) ABC-TV 10:00 PM Eastern/9:00 PM Central

http://LisaMarie.tripod.co.jp