Lisa Marie Presley

(transcript of her appearance on ABC TV's program, "Enough Rope" with Andrew Denton, Australia, 2004)

(Intro by Andrew Denton) The interview you are about to see does contain some bad language, so if that sort of thing offends you, here's a couple of seconds to switch channels...

My first guest has been described as the world's most famous daughter. From day one she's been subject to a level of celebrity that is almost impossible to imagine. Like many famous kids she pushed back, rebelled in her teens, made some dodgy choices, and got her name into the papers for the wrong reasons. Now in her mid-30s she's ironed her life out and has recently begun a singing career that has brought her success in America and to Australia for her first concert tour, ladies and gentlemen, Lisa Marie Presley.

Andrew Denton: Lisa Marie, welcome to the show and congratulations, the album's gone gold in the States I believe?

Lisa Marie Presley: Thank you, yes.

Andrew Denton: Well done, we're going to see a clip very shortly. Now a lot of people in your situation would have taken the sort of Kelly Osbourne route, they would have linked up with a few stylists and a few good producers and cashed in on teenage celebrity, but you've waited till your mid-30s and you've done it your way. Where did you get the strength to do that?

Lisa Marie Presley: I don't know, I just think it's in my character, basically I don't think I have anything in me that would want to do something like that you know for a superficial purpose or, I'm not saying that they are by the way. I'm not trying to do that whole number but I'm just saying me or who I am.

Andrew Denton: Look I don't think anyone on this planet would look at the Osbourne's and think superficial, so it's all right.

Lisa Marie Presley: I didn't say it, you did.

Andrew Denton: Ah, as you were growing up, as you were a teenager though, I can only imagine with the name Presley, that a whole bunch of producers came to you and said come on, let's do an album.

Lisa Marie Presley: Yeah it happened periodically, it did, but it wasn't something that I was ready to do and didn't really have... I mean I started singing when I was 21, 22, a sort of outlet on my own. And then, you know didn't have any reason to, I didn't really want attention any more than I already had on me particularly, so I didn't pursue anything publicly with it until later on. I just felt like, you know, like that's enough, I'll just do this and sort of use this record to be cathartic and let it go and see what happens and have my own thumbprint for whoever wants to have it or hear it or whatever, whatever you have.

Andrew Denton: I should point out by the way that you've got a shocking cold and that you are seconds away from passing out, is that correct? Yeah? We're about to actually play a clip from the album which is called "To Whom It May Concern". This is the single "Lights Out". Let's take a look at that. (Music Clip)

Andrew Denton: Do you remember the first time you performed in public and what that was like?

Lisa Marie Presley: God, I, they put me out, I think it was just a convention called "Norm", it was being held in Florida and they basically threw me out really fast. I think the third time I performed live was on "David Letterman" in the States, so it was never something that I you know had a runway in doing. Andrew Denton: Why?

Lisa Marie Presley: You know, I just didn't have the time to I guess when it was when that engine was running and the machine was going, the record was going I just sort of went out. I didn't have a normal runway of playing small clubs, which is getting used to the idea of singing live. And I don't really know actually the answer to that question now in retrospect. I thought that I could, I should do that and then I didn't end up doing it. So I ended up having to sort of dive off the diving board.

Andrew Denton: So you're standing there on the stage, I'm just trying to get inside the Lisa Marie Presley head at this point.

Lisa Marie Presley: Oh God bless you.

Andrew Denton: Ha ha. Lisa Marie Presley: I mean you know watch out, beware I'm warning you.

Andrew Denton: Ha, ha. So you're standing there on stage, I mean at what point did this realisation hit you that I'm a bit undercooked here?

Lisa Marie Presley: God, when did it hit me? I think on tour. You know I think I could pull off various things, and I don't know there were a few things that were live, and when I went out on tour I was like a deer caught in the headlights at some point and I was like you're going to have to get yourself through this cause it was just, you know, no matter what I had to go out and do it. And I was, I just came to this thing where I was like, you know, I'm not somebody who likes attention on me so what the hell am I doing standing up front of the stage singing. And I had this sort of, you know, "be okay with that". So that kind of took me a little while. And then I was okay with it.

Andrew Denton: I'll bet it did. What advice has your mum given you about going into the industry?

Lisa Marie Presley: She's, you know, tried to get me to just, she's been really really supportive actually about that. She's goes and travels around with me and she's now a road dog so when I go out she comes with me. She kind of just lets me do my thing, she knows better than to tell me what I should or shouldn't do at this point I think.

Andrew Denton: On the liner notes you dedicate the album to the kids, Riley and Benjamin, as the loves of your life.

Lisa Marie Presley:Yes.

Andrew Denton: What do you like about being a mum?

Lisa Marie Presley: I think everything. I think just the grounding experience, you know everything's better when you have children. Whatever they're experiencing you experience as well with them, over again, even if you're grown up, even if you're, no matter what's happening they're always there. They're there to ground you, you have to get out of yourself and everything becomes about them, and that's really good. Ah everything's great.

Andrew Denton: What is it from your childhood that you'd like your kids to have?

Lisa Marie Presley: From mine? What do I want? I think just, you know, what I want is for them to be able to do what they want, and not have to be overshadowed by you know anybody else in their family. That's going to be a big feat, it's going to be a big mountain to climb, and it's one that I, I've struggled with and I think you know they're going to have to find their way on that front.

Andrew Denton: When you were, oh about Riley's age about 13, you were by your own account, you know, apathetic. You'd lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling. You started getting into drugs which you did for a while as a teenager. As a mum now of a teenager the same age, does this make you a bit paranoid, "oh what's she up to"?

Lisa Marie Presley: Yes. Andrew Denton: Mm. Lisa Marie Presley: Yeah.

Andrew Denton: Welcome to parenthood!

Lisa Marie Presley: Yeah.

Andrew Denton: Yeah.

Lisa Marie Presley: And as much as I want to think she's, you know, she's actually doing really well, but I, I still like go "what are you doing, where were you?" And I'll like get up really close when she's come home and start sniffing around.

Andrew Denton: Ha ha.

Lisa Marie Presley: You know.

Andrew Denton: Actually, because do you know all the angles? Or have teenagers now have they learned new ones?

Lisa Marie Presley: I haven't, she's really good at whatever she's doing. She's got me really, really convinced that she's not doing anything she's not supposed to be.

Andrew Denton: Ah she's playing you for a sucker big time.

Lisa Marie Presley: Ha, ha I know that that's coming, I know. I know when she grows up she's going to tell me that entire time I was higher than the mountains, I was whatever.

Andrew Denton: Has being a mum and now a single mum, has that made you think differently about your relationship with your own mum?

Lisa Marie Presley: Yeah I think it has. I mean my mum and I have become closer in the last two, three years than we've ever been so, I don't know what changed that, but that happened.

Andrew Denton: What do you think changed it?

Lisa Marie Presley: I don't know it's just kind of, we looked at each other and we're okay with who the other was, even though we're nothing alike. We just had a moment where we just realised that we were okay with each other. It was just a constant resistance before that. You know I was too this, she was too that and we just finally went okay you know what, we're still who we are, you're my mother and I'm her daughter and we're all we have, so you better...I don't know something just happened, changed.

Andrew Denton: Do you look back on her as a single mum and think wow, that was, you did a pretty good job?

Lisa Marie Presley: I do, I do. Especially because she was young raising me. You know she started, she, when you're younger and you have children you grow up with them, or you tend to, still. When you have them later in life you tend to have it together a little more. So I have to give her credit for trying to find herself and growing up with me.

Andrew Denton: On the album you also dedicated to your mum and dad and you say, I hope I make you proud of me. Do you reckon you have?

Lisa Marie Presley: I can answer for one. I don't know for the other. But, I can, I can say that she is seemingly.

Andrew Denton: Yeah, seemingly?

Lisa Marie Presley: Right yeah.

Andrew Denton: Oh come on, you know.

Lisa Marie Presley: I don't, I'm not one to blow smoke at my own arse, so...

Andrew Denton: Yeah, but she...

Lisa Marie Presley: I'll tell you the truth.

Andrew Denton: But, I'm asking you to tell me what smoke she blew off your arse. I mean she, she's... Lisa Marie Presley: She's blowing enough smoke up my arse to be with me on every show now. Andrew Denton: Yeah. I guess so. I guess.

Lisa Marie Presley: No, I mean she's very supportive is what I'm trying to say.

Andrew Denton: Cause your dad, and let's use the name Elvis for Pete's sake, he loved to hear you sing when you were a little kid.

Lisa Marie Presley: Yes.

Andrew Denton: He'd be pretty proud of you don't you reckon?

Lisa Marie Presley: I reckon.

Andrew Denton: Yeah. Have you and your mum talked much about the impact Elvis has had on your life? Lisa Marie Presley: Mm, no we don't.

Andrew Denton: Really?

Lisa Marie Presley: No, I mean I think it's just known, I don't think we talk about it too much.

Andrew Denton: In the song on the album "No One Noticed", it's actually, it's very sweet about Elvis. You say, you know, I don't know, correct me if I've got this wrong, "you're still sweet, you always were, the things you had to endure, it seemed like no one noticed". You were you were nine when he died, and now you manage his estate. You've got the whole thing. Do you have a sense of the man or is he hard to find behind all the hype?

Lisa Marie Presley: Oh no, I have a sense. A very accurate sort of never dying sense.

Andrew Denton: And, what is that, who is that man that you sense?

Lisa Marie Presley: Ah, just someone who was you know everything that everyone perceived him to be and in the way that he sort of came through his music and his spirit came through and affected people. He was that spirit that was behind all that.

Andrew Denton: What do you think of the people that reckon Elvis is still alive?

Lisa Marie Presley: I have no idea. I really don't. I have no good answer for that or an Elvis impersonator or the other, I don't, know what ever else flies around.

Andrew Denton: Yeah. And a lot does fly around doesn't it. A couple of years ago, this gives a sense of your life, a Swedish woman published a book in which she said that you were an impostor and she was the real Lisa Marie Presley.

Lisa Marie Presley: Right.

Andrew Denton: Did it ever give you pause for thought?

Lisa Marie Presley: You know what, I almost wanted to say, take it lady, go for it. You know what. She would have found herself in the tabloids every other week. Yeah. And what ever else comes with that.

Andrew Denton: And is that a joy to be in the tabloids every other week?

Lisa Marie Presley: Oh my god, are you kidding? No it's not.

Andrew Denton: What is it like to be that, that play thing of people?

Lisa Marie Presley: You know what they were really, excuse me, fucking quiet last year. When this record came out, I heard Russell Crowe curse so I'm doing it.

Andrew Denton: Ha ha.

Lisa Marie Presley: Sorry.

Andrew Denton: That's okay.

Lisa Marie Presley: They were quiet when my record came out, cause they didn't really have much to say because it came out. Now I was stuck up and then I was all over the place and I sort of went into another stream of media, and they didn't start doing anything till I went on tour and they now they're, you know. Every time I go on tour they're kind of putting me in there for what ever reason. So I, I hate it.

Andrew Denton: It makes you angry, does it ever make you laugh? Do you ever look at it and go this is just, now funny?

Lisa Marie Presley: You know, right now there's one in the, I think it's the U.S., where they're talking about 150 pounds and bingeing and miserable and I'm in a dark room and everyone's trying to get me to go to a fat farm. I mean I can't. I'm laughing right now. But, here's the thing, the thing is that it's not true, I'm not 150 pounds. I'm not saying I'm the skinniest lady in the world, but anyway, it just seems to happen every time I'm about to go on tour, which then you know they try to set this whole picture of a miserable bingeing in a dark room, crying, fat person, who, I don't know what that's supposed to do, other than say I'm like, I'm losing my mind perhaps. And it sort of, it makes it's somebody's out there doing that and deciding to do that right when a tour starts.

Andrew Denton: So do, I gather there's no line of defence you can run other than to appear on stage patently not fat, miserable and bingeing.

Lisa Marie Presley: Right, what do I say to that?

Andrew Denton: You apologised for your bad language before, I'm going to apologise for your bad language too, I want to read this to get it right.

Lisa Marie Presley: Oh Jesus.

Andrew Denton: Now. You've described yourself, and I'm reading this as a quote "crazy arsed, mother fucking shithead". Do you stand by that?

Lisa Marie Presley: Yes, I do, absolutely.

Andrew Denton: In what way?

Lisa Marie Presley: I'm under oath. In what way? Every way.

Andrew Denton: It bespeaks a certain wildness. Do you like the idea of being a bad girl who's got a bit boring?

Lisa Marie Presley: Oh yeah, without question. Yeah.

Andrew Denton: So what is your idea of wild Lisa Marie?

Lisa Marie Presley: But there's good, there's got to be a fine line, you can't just be bad and crazy and on drugs and out of your mind, and that's all I'm talking about, but you know to stand by what you believe in and be strong and you know, that sort of thing.

Andrew Denton: What I'm hearing here, but what you keep tap-dancing around, is somebody that's had a hell of a fight to be herself in the eyes of the world. Am I right?

Lisa Marie Presley: Right. Right. Isn't that expected, but yes I wasn't thinking that specifically and no I was not tap-dancing I just, I don't know on what level you're talking about but, you know, sorry go ahead.

Andrew Denton: Go on.

Lisa Marie Presley: No you.

Andrew Denton: No you. Lisa Marie Presley: No you. Andrew Denton: I can win this you know. Lisa Marie Presley: No, go. Andrew Denton: You've got a cold, you're weakened.

Lisa Marie Presley: No.

Andrew Denton: Ha, ha. You, you've said that your taste in men is psychotic, what do you mean by that?

Lisa Marie Presley: Has been. You know.

Andrew Denton: Has been.

Lisa Marie Presley: What I mean is if you lined everybody up that I was ever with in a row, that it would never make any sense. They're all very different you know.

Andrew Denton: Yeah.

Lisa Marie Presley: There's two that are, when I was up, but there's also others that still would be, you know, there's no pattern of sanity. And there's no method behind the madness.

Andrew Denton: Are you attracted to people that are a bit like you, that like to be wild at heart?

Lisa Marie Presley: Yeah, but see those are the, that's the not good match ups, cause you have to have somebody that sort of counteracts that. You know, you can't have both people doing that.

Andrew Denton: Your producer Glen Ballard, when you went to do this album, he said to you, he said you asked him for advice. He said, "Write about your life". So it's interesting to look at the lyrics and and particularly 'SOB' and it says, "I lost my trust in you, you were dangerous and scary and you poisoned me with sweets, everyone was intrigued by". Why did you fall in love with Michael Jackson?

Lisa Marie Presley: Oh see, I knew this was a segue.

Andrew Denton: Yeah. Well look, it's the word dangerous, it's a giveaway.

Lisa Marie Presley: Right, right. Why did I?

Andrew Denton: Yeah.

Lisa Marie Presley: I have no idea, why does anyone fall in love with anyone. it was 9 years ago, can't really remember you know.

Andrew Denton: Really?

Lisa Marie Presley: Just, just hung out, we were friends. And, he wasn't anything like he is right now, I don't know what's happened, but I don't know. Same reason anybody falls in love with anybody.

Andrew Denton: He was different to what you expected though wasn't he?

Lisa Marie Presley: Yes.

Andrew Denton: In what way?

Lisa Marie Presley: Just more normal. Not the things that he sort of puts out about himself.

Andrew Denton: Cause you've said that he is the opposite of how he appears. The Michael Jackson we saw last year, you know dangling the baby over the balcony, putting veils over the kids' faces, is that him?

Lisa Marie Presley: Okay. No, I don't know, I don't know anymore.

Andrew Denton: You, when you talk.

Lisa Marie Presley: I never saw anything like that, is what my answer is.

Andrew Denton: When you talked about him, you described a man who was very smart.

Lisa Marie Presley: Yes.

Andrew Denton: Pretty ruthless, pretty manipulative. Now as a strong woman, you clearly are, was it difficult to be in a relationship where to some extent you felt powerless?

Lisa Marie Presley: It was, that's why I left. I mean only powerless in a lot of ways, in terms of, you know, realising that I was part of a machine, and seeing things going on that I couldn't do anything about. You know and don't ask me what sort of things, cause I'm not going to answer. But just stuff.

Andrew Denton: So what sort of things?

Lisa Marie Presley: See! You know what, I watched interviews of you, like two of them before and I saw where you were going to go in on me. What were we saying?

Andrew Denton: I'll just read back my question. Ah, what sort of things?

Lisa Marie Presley: Of what? You mean that I noticed.

Andrew Denton: Okay I'll...

Lisa Marie Presley: And that I had no control over?

Andrew Denton: Yeah, I got the sense that you, and believe you me I'm not going to spend the next half hour talking about Michael Jackson, we'll move on.

Lisa Marie Presley: Thank you.

Andrew Denton: But, I got the sense, cause I know that this is a tender area, but I got the sense that you had become a part of Michael Jackson Incorporated. That you had an Access Most Areas ticket, but that you didn't have access to the board room necessarily. Would that be a fair way to describe the relationship?

Lisa Marie Presley: I didn't want access, I mean I wasn't in it for any other reason than I had fallen in love with someone, so it wasn't like I was trying to find access to something. Like for some, I don't quite understand the question maybe.

Andrew Denton: It must be very difficult to have a sense of being used in full public view.

Lisa Marie Presley: Right. I don't think I was aware of that so much at the time.

Andrew Denton: And now?

Lisa Marie Presley: I have a different take now.

Andrew Denton: And what do you think?

Lisa Marie Presley: I look back at anything and look at my own responsibility in it and so I'm not going to sit here and tell you that it was all, I'm a victim, and there's this whole bad stuff or whatever, but I will, I mean I, I look, when I look back now I look at what I was doing, where was I coming from, and what did I do to cause that on myself as well.

Andrew Denton: And when you look at that man now, and I'm not asking you to say what's going on now because you can't possibly know, but when you look at him, how do you feel about him? Do you feel sorry for him, do you feel for him still?

Lisa Marie Presley: I, I you know ta... I can't, it's really bizarre, I feel nothing. It's just, I watch just like anyone else when anything's going on, and I have the same reaction and "wow", or you know, "holy shit", or what ever, it's whatever people are doing I'm doing the same thing. That's, well with nothing attached any more, which is, it took a long time but that's where it's at now.

Andrew Denton: You've seen fame and you've experienced it in a way very few ever will. What does fame do to people?

Lisa Marie Presley: It depends on the person. It kind of puts you in a position where you will immediately show you'll either expand it or you'll become an arsehole and lose it. You know and there's one, there's not really in-betweens on that one I don't think. You'll either become a real jerk and abuse it and become obnoxious and unrealistic, and fall down the chute or you'll learn how to deal with it.

Andrew Denton: And how do you learn how to deal with it?

Lisa Marie Presley: You kind of just have to go through stuff and figure it out. I guess me having been born and exposed to a lot, I sort of figured things out quietly along the way. But I mean I know, it's really, that's an interesting subject cause there's a lot of people that I know that are very very famous that would, they don't like to talk about how famous they are and they don't like to talk about themselves and they're not what you'd think and they don't like to blow smoke up their own arse. And then there's people who just become famous from doing a sitcom or they've just got a bunch of money or whatever and they're the biggest arsehole that ever walked the planet. And you're sitting there going, you know. They're more important in their own heads than the real, it's just, it's a very bizarre life and subject.

Andrew Denton: Your dad was surrounded by sycophants and people taking advantage.

Lisa Marie Presley: Yes.

Andrew Denton: Do you have a pretty good bullshit meter?

Lisa Marie Presley: Yes, you know but every once in a while I get a challenge and something happens that I wasn't ready for, and you know, throws it off. It's not perfected yet.

Andrew Denton: Ha, ha. For example?

Lisa Marie Presley: For example people that get close to me that are there for the wrong reasons and have a whole other thing going.

Andrew Denton: Which means what, people that are basically trying to get money or vicarious publicity out of you?

Lisa Marie Presley: Something yeah, or you know even closer, even deeper than that, not so much monetary things, just deeper, betrayal.

Andrew Denton: How does someone in your position, having come from where you've come from and seen what you've seen, how do you learn to trust?

Lisa Marie Presley: God, that's been an ongoing thing, but, I think that me surrounding myself by people that I've known since I was a teenager and I've sort of been through life enough with, I have sort of a good support team around me, that I've had forever. So that helps. It's so many, you know I have the same problems that everybody else has on that, you know people trust, if the trust is just a general broad subject that's kind of controversial and shady, shaky, ah what did you say, you had some word, adjective, what was it?

Andrew Denton: Dodgy.

Lisa Marie Presley: Dodgy.

Andrew Denton: Yeah, that's a good word, that's a good Australian word you can take it with you, check it at customs as you go.

Lisa Marie Presley: Right.

Andrew Denton: You talked before about issues of trust.

Lisa Marie Presley: Right.

Andrew Denton: You've been through a series of relationships, as you said, you stack all the men you've been together with, it wouldn't make any sense at all.

Lisa Marie Presley: Mm, mm.

Andrew Denton: In the furnace of your life, how are you going to forge another bond?

Lisa Marie Presley: It's, they come along, somehow.

Andrew Denton: Yeah.

Lisa Marie Presley: From somewhere. Yeah.

Andrew Denton: How do you make space for it though?

Lisa Marie Presley: I always do, somehow, manage to do that.

Andrew Denton: And the age old question, how do you find the right person?

Lisa Marie Presley: I don't, I don't know how does anybody find the right person. How did you find the right person?

Andrew Denton: I actually looked across the room and there she was. But it was...

Lisa Marie Presley: See.

Andrew Denton: But it was one of those moments. Literally eyes met, love at first sight.

Lisa Marie Presley: Right.

Andrew Denton: Have you ever, have you ever had that?

Lisa Marie Presley: Or so I thought. You know when how many times has someone thought that, and then they, you know that's great that it's worked out, but it doesn't always work out like that.

Andrew Denton: With respect and with sympathy though, yours is not a typical situation.

Lisa Marie Presley: Exactly, which makes it more difficult and it's not that easy to be with someone who's, you know, the female that's the strong one that's got this, you know there's a whole thing connected to me and it takes quite a male to be able to deal with it.

Andrew Denton: See I would have thought that somebody in your position, for whom money is not a major issue, you could go to anywhere in the world and not be hassled. Why don't you do that?

Lisa Marie Presley: Wait a minute, in what sense not be hassled?

Andrew Denton: Well you could go to the middle of Australia where there's no one and they don't give a rats who you are, it's just g'day. You could go to Iceland, the volcanos of Iceland, you could go to Antarctica.

Lisa Marie Presley: Well, I'm working, right now.

Andrew Denton: Yeah, but when you're not working.

Lisa Marie Presley: When I'm not working, well yeah, I would if I wasn't working. I don't usually, I don't get over here unless I'm working, I'm here cause I'm working.

Andrew Denton: Sure, but you could chose not to work.

Lisa Marie Presley: But, I don't want to not work.

Andrew Denton: Okay. Okay, so when this work cycle's finished.

Lisa Marie Presley: Right.

Andrew Denton: Are you going to go somewhere?

Lisa Marie Presley: Yes. I am.

Andrew Denton: Yeah. And can you tell us exactly where that is so that I'll let...

Lisa Marie Presley: See?

Andrew Denton: No, no, no, I don't want to know that.

Lisa Marie Presley: You know what the thing is, I saw the earlier interviews that you did with a few people and I understand that it's very, you people are very open and honest here and normally I am too, but you know this is going to bleed over to the U.S. so I, I tend to be more, cause I know that they're going to take it and do, maybe you know, that's what I'm used to having happen anyway, when I do an interview.

Andrew Denton: Okay, so.

Lisa Marie Presley: Something's being taken out of context, and then you know, bam! It's on the cover of everything.

Andrew Denton: Well what, you know just so you can relax we're going to edit this interview so it's got you saying, "I'm fat and bingey and desperate" and then we're going to have you coughing and saying "crazy arse mother fucking shit head", and we're just going to cut that together and it's going to be me saying, "What is the matter with this woman?" So, I really don't think you have anything to worry about.

Lisa Marie Presley: Thank you.

Andrew Denton: Will you respect us in the morning here in Australia Lisa Marie?

Lisa Marie Presley: Absolutely.

Andrew Denton: Yeah, look I hope the tour's good for you, more importantly I hope life is good for you.

Lisa Marie Presley: Thank you.

Andrew Denton: And thank you for being with us tonight.

Lisa Marie Presley: Thanks for having me.

Andrew Denton: Lisa Marie Presley.