Princess of Rock makes a name for herself By RICHARD HARRINGTON, The Washington Post ROSE M. PROUSER, CNN/The Associated Press This a big month for all things Presley, including a made-for-TV miniseries debuting tomorrow and the conclusion of Lisa Marie Presley's concert tour. If you like Presleys, this is a good month for you: On Sunday and Wednesday, CBS serves up the four-hour "Elvis" miniseries. On May 13, CBS offers "Elvis by the Presleys," a two-hour documentary featuring intimate interviews with former wife Priscilla Beaulieu Presley and Lisa Marie, their only child. And Lisa Marie Presley is winding up a concert tour with shows at Trump Marina (May 14) in Atlantic City and The Stone Pony (May 15) in Asbury Park, N.J., in support of her second album, "Now What?" Presley admits she was a little worried about the timing of the album and tour, particularly because the upcoming documentary and accompanying book offer her most extensive discussions yet about Elvis, who died in 1977, when she was 9. Her parents had divorced in 1972, and Lisa Marie lived mostly in Beverly Hills with her mother but visited Graceland regularly. "That was the first time I decided to do something like that, and I did it because of the nature of that documentary, which is directly from our own mouths and no one else's," she says of "Elvis by the Presleys," which features candid interviews and previously unseen family home movies and photographs from the Presley estate archives. "It shows all his different sides and the cross he had to bear and the struggles that went with that. All that stuff put me even closer to understanding what he had to go up against, let alone what he'd think about what I had to go up against -- I'm sure he'd feel a lot of empathy towards that." Famous from the moment she was born nine months after Elvis and Priscilla wed, Presley has lived her life not only under that considerable familial shadow, but also in the glaring spotlight shined on her marriages to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage. Both marriages were brief (20 months and three months, respectively) and both are off-limits interview topics. Presley is less guarded about Elvis, who would have been 70 this year, and to whom she bears an uncanny physical resemblance, albeit a pint-size one since she's just five feet tall and change. Still, she says, "I wouldn't have done ('Elvis by the Presleys') if I hadn't already made a little thumbprint on my own." Her 2003 debut, "To Whom It May Concern," opened higher on the Billboard album chart than her dad's eponymous 1956 debut, No. 5 to his No. 11; both ended up selling about 500,000 copies each. Of course, Elvis did go on to become the biggest-selling solo artist of all time, which explains in part why Lisa Marie didn't make her debut until she was 35 -- not that she ever needed to. When she turned 25 in 1993, Presley inherited Elvis' estate (estimated worth: $100 million to $150 million). At age 30, she inherited her father's fortune (estimated at $300 million). Never under pressure to find a career, Presley was also in no hurry, even though "I've been writing since I was a kid -- songs, poems, short stories. That was the only subject in school that I was good at. That's where I got good grades and where I was happiest as well." When Presley first talked to her mom about a recording career in her mid-teens, she was warned that doors might open because of who she was but would close just as fast if she didn't deliver. At 20, she married musician Danny Keough, with whom she wrote and recorded demos. In the early '90s, Presley came close to being signed to Epic by Tommy Mottola but backed out when she became pregnant with her second child, Benjamin, now 12; daughter Danielle, 15 and known as Riley, is a fashion model and, yes, the Presley looks extend to a third generation. Music took a back seat to motherhood, and remained there after Presley's divorce from Keough and weird-no-matter-how-you-look-at-it marriage to Jackson, then reeling from the first wave of accusations of sexually molesting young boys. Presley says she stopped writing until after her January 1996 divorce from Jackson; by then, she'd been reinspired by an album released the year before, Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill," which suggested a way for Presley to say things the way she needed to say them. " 'You Oughta Know' was all about honesty and female strength, which I really responded to," Presley explains. Morissette's album "opened the door to inspiring me because I knew that's more what I was about, and no one else had really done it quite like that. That had everything to do with why I wanted to work with (Morissette producer) Glen Ballard. He heard a dark, horrifying demo that wasn't anywhere near radio-friendly, but he got me from that demo and didn't immediately jump on me to try to do anything and promised me that he wouldn't, so that's why I went with him. "I wanted it very clear that I was doing my own thing," she says. "If I wanted to do Elvis covers, if I wanted to get on RCA -- I could have done anything, but I really had it in my head to do my own thing." Presley signed with Capitol Records in 1999 and started work with Ballard; "To Whom It May Concern" was finished four years later with Eric Rosse at the helm. The album consisted of mostly dark songs, delivered in a throaty, blues-edged voice reminiscent of Melissa Etheridge, Alannah Myles and Cher. It earned generally positive reviews, particularly its lead single, "Lights Out," addressing Elvis' death and the burial plot that awaits Lisa Marie on Graceland's "damn back lawn." Presley insists she has no regrets about having waited so long to record. "The only reason I wish I'd done it earlier is because not that long ago, more diverse and honest music was played on the radio," she says. "Other than that, I'm happy I waited because I think you have to be bit by the snake of life a little bit and then you can really purge your experiences better." "Now What," which debuted in April at No. 9, includes about a half-dozen songs co-written with premiere pop-star collaborator Linda Perry (on melody and structure -- the lyrics are all Presley) and guest turns by Pink and former Sex Pistol guitarist Steve Jones. Jones appears on several tracks, including "When You Go," dedicated to Presley pal Johnny Ramone, who died on the day she began recording a cover of the Ramones' "Here, Now" (it's a hidden bonus track). Overall, the album is far sunnier than her first, though there are still clouds drifting above. "That first record was written in a darker period," Presley says. "And while I'm more inspired by treacherous subjects, I was just sort of purging on the first one, and that was the mood I was in for those four years." Presley had also waited until 2003 to make her debut singing in front of a live audience -- on "Good Morning America." As for her voice, she says "it's gotten a lot stronger from touring. I was basically insecure about it because there's no technicality in how I sing or what I do, but I am OK at what I am singing and the melodies that I do go for and how I come across -- I do emote well through my voice." Still, Presley admits it took a while for her to come to terms with rocking in public. "I wasn't innately used to trying to attract attention to myself, based on the nature of my life, I'm sure, so I really had to stop acting like a deer caught in the headlights. That changed when I headlined and I saw the seriousness of the faces and realized at that point it's about the music, not about the staring at me for whatever reason, whatever tabloid." Ahh, those pesky tabloids. Lisa Marie has been a tabloid baby, first speculated about while she was in the womb; a tabloid teen as a wild, self-destructive child and heir with drug problems; and finally a tabloid queen as celebrity spouse and advocate for Scientology, which helped her turn her life around at age 18. It also may explain Presley's vitriolic reading of Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry." With its refrain "Kick 'em when they're up/ Kick 'em when they're down," that '80s screed scours both tabloid mentality and celebrity culture. "When the first record came out, I don't think (the tabloids) liked that it did well, and when I did my first tour, they started a whole campaign to picture that I was losing it, that I was gaining weight, that I was miserable, that I was drinking myself into these hysteric fits of eating because of bad ticket sales. They tried to make it like I was losing, when it was the opposite, and I realized that ultimately they were trying to make me look like what became of my dad." The tabloids are quiet these days. Apparently there's not enough drama in Presley's life, even though her band includes both first husband Keough on bass, and her current beau, music director Michael Lockwood. Both get shout-outs in the liner notes, Keough as "my best friend" and "unconditional loved one," Lockwood as "soulmate" and "the perfect fit to the other half of me." And, Lisa Marie writes, she, Elvis and Priscilla "are still an eternal unit never broken." home | new | the man | lisa marie | priscilla & others | fun | clothes | photos | records | movies | concerts | gifts | web | guide | e-cards | today | facts Click here for more info on the book The Girls' Guide to Elvis Click here to check out sister book The Girls' Guide to Country Click here to check out the latest sister book The Ultimate Guide to Chick Flicks