The most tangible link that we have to ELVIS today is his magnificent daughter, Lisa Marie. I can’t say that I’m qualified to make this statement as an expert, but my belief is that he would be so proud of who she grew up to be and of what she is all about as a person, as a mother, and now as a fellow artist. She has battled her demons, had her trials and tribulations, as well as her issues with her father and his legacy, but she has emerged as her own woman who is determined to choose the direction of her life. She is undaunted by her father’s memory or her mother’s domination. She allowed herself to be manipulated by her cult and her craving for the spotlight into a marriage that brought her universal ridicule, but she survived and moved on without missing a beat. She has borne many a cross in her young life and it has given her a center that grounds her through any storm—she is every bit as tough as her old man . . .

I guess no reference to Lisa Marie Presley is ever complete until you draw parallels between her and her father . . . undoubtedly the great burden of her life . . . I mean think of how it would be to be revered, loved, adored, worshipped and canonized by a billion people all over the world for someone else’s accomplishments. How would it be to be looked at by the eyes and shudders of the world, only because they hope to somebody else in you? How would it be to know that every person you meet, is interested in you only because you can tell them about somebody else? How would it be to know that people want to be close with you only so they can touch another? I would imagine that after a while it would make you feel like an unperson . . . You know, I don’t understand why Lisa Marie got the bad press after she broke-up with Nicolas Cage; he was the one with the bizarre ELVIS fetish that led him to be attracted to Lisa Marie in the first place. Every interview he did was all about his relationship with Lisa Marie being his connection to ELVIS, and about how much she looked and sounded like ELVIS, and about how much he wanted to mate with her to procreate a “Little ELVIS.” He was excited by the prospect of mingling his genes with ELVIS’ seemingly more than he was interested in co-mingling in Lisa Marie’s jeans . . . the fool . . . You really have to feel for her; even when she’s naked in bed making love to her husband, she’s still looked at to see somebody else . . .

So she is either too much like ELVIS for her own benefit or not enough like him to suit other people and that would have to drive even the sanest person nuts after awhile. When she doesn’t answer personal or private questions posed to her by the press and public about her father or her romantic relationships, they say that she has a snotty attitude. Ever since she was a teenager, she has either been criticized for not being talented like her father or for being a celebrity without ever cutting a track. No mortal could escape that kind of emotional and psychological pressure without some scarring . . . and where can she turn for guidance; whom can she trust enough to bear her soul to, so that she can heal her wounds? Sadly her father was dearly departed from her at a tender age and her relationship with her mother has always been volatile, so she has turned inward to find herself. The end result is a wise, frank, spiritual, woman-of-the-ages, who is guarded and savvy—traits that she inherited in part from her parents then honed with her own grit. She has successfully shielded Benjamin and Danielle from the public—without the aid of surgical masks— so that you wouldn’t know them if you were standing next to them. Because of her, they will be free to grow up and live and die on their own merits . . . and grandpa’s billions . . .

No matter who you are, no matter what hardships or graces you are born into, you must seek self-definition or else you will drift through life at odds with yourself and the world. The precarious journey of self discovery is that much more arduous when the world has already weighed in on who you’re supposed to be . . . or rather, who you’re supposed to be like . . . For the “Prince of Camelot,” John F. Kennedy, Jr., the question posed to him from the age of 10 on was, “When are you going to run for President of the United States of America?” For the princess of “THE KING OF ROCK & ROLL” the question posed to her has always been, “When’re ya gonna cut an album?” No one ever bothered asking them where they wished to search for their destinies; no one was interested in their individuality or their desires. They were expected only to be reasonable facsimiles of their iconic fathers. Each had to also bear the burden of the world’s grief as well as their own when they lost their fathers prematurely and tragically as children. As they grew up, they had to learn of their fathers’ indiscretions and peccadilloes in bold media splashes and had to sit by helplessly as a cottage industry was built with a saturation smear campaign against their fathers’ character and legacy. Each had interests and pursuits quashed by their domineering mothers and had to break free of their fathers’ shadow in order to stand in their own light, so it took them until their mid-thirties to strike out on their own. For J.F.K. Jr., it was the idea of bridging Hollywood and Washington through George Magazine and for LMP it was cutting an album; or as she put it, “Opening up my mouth to sing and letting my guts come out.” Just like . . . well you know . . .

It’s hard enough for anyone just starting out in a field of endeavor to be successful, because it takes trial and error. Lisa Marie is not only expected to be good, or even great; she is expected to turn the world on its ear—she just wanted to cut an album. It took a lot of heart for her to do it knowing that the best she could hope to hear is, “You’re not as good as your father,” spoken and written a hundred different ways by millions of people. I mean she shouldn’t take it to heart, because no one is as good as her father . . . She had the nerve to go forward knowing that in the eyes of millions whatever she did would be considered a failure and would line up to bag on her. She knew that she would have to endure all the things she hated the most in life—being followed by cameras, being interviewed in depth about her dad, her husbands, her mother, Scientology; she knew that by coming out of her shell, she would be mimicked and mocked, but she stuck by her guns . . . her desire to express herself must be very deep . . . You see her backstage at these music award ceremonies hanging on the fringe like some wannabe, and you could just tell how much she wanted to belong there . . . but not enough to take the obvious shortcut . . . In fact she initially wanted to release her first song, “Lights Out,” and not reveal who she was, but Capitol Records wouldn’t go along with her. She could’ve mass marketed her virtual duet with her father, “Don’t Cry Daddy,” but she wanted that to be a special commemorative to her father and to his fans . . . and it was . . .

Lisa Marie has always resisted being thrown into her father’s mold, which many have taken as a sign of her disrespect toward him. Actually I can’t think of a more fitting tribute that she could pay her father than to cling to her own identity and not change herself over into someone that she isn’t. When J.F.K., Jr. spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 1988, he was worked over by image-makers and stylists so that he could emulate his father to the best of his ability; he was there only to receive proxy accolades and the assessment was, “He’s not his father.” When Lisa Marie finally got around to recording her album, To Whom It May Concern, she did it on her own terms. RCA had long been after her to do a cover of her Daddy’s tunes, and she rejected the idea out of hand. She could’ve called in the best songwriters and arrangers, but instead chose to keep artistic control and create her own music. As she said in an interview with VH1, “I wanted to leave my thumbprint, even if it sucked.” When she didn’t do the album RCA’s way, they dropped her. Lisa Marie took it with a grain of salt, stood her ground, went to Capitol Records and released it her way.

So now we tally up how much she is like her Daddy; the way she moves her hands as she speaks, the way she squints and stares off into the distance as she responds to questions, the way that she raises her eyebrow when she makes a point, the slight smirk on her face when in repose, and the way she bursts into a smile at odd moments. She’s as humble as dust one moment and a high maintenance Prima Donna the next—a down-to-earth diva . . . Every night is party night at Lisa Marie’s house, as she and her tight circle of lifelong friends get together and laugh and play and drink till the sun comes up. She likes to go out and kick up her heels, but is a real homebody at heart. Also, like her Daddy, the lens adores her, and she is a gifted photographer’s model who emotes with great depth on cue. The photo shoots that she has done over the years for various magazines around the world have been a vision . . .

As we all saw in the now infamous Howard Stern interviews, she is a straight shooter that doesn’t flinch. She is who she is; a hot, young, contemporary woman whose style, language and attitudes are reflective of her generation—at least she doesn’t have a tattoo . . . I think . . . She likes to have a good time, doesn’t have a lot of hang-ups, and is open and adventurous; she is comfortable with who she is—the ideal girl to party with . . . It’s too bad Howard never takes his head out of his ass or anyone else’s long enough to even do a good job at being Howard Stern—and how hard could that be? The Sternesque question he should’ve asked Lisa Marie was what she thought about reading in the book ELVIS, Priscilla and Me that her mom’s then boyfriend, Mike Edwards—whom she hated— used to bust his boner erotically fantasizing over her when she was barely pubescent . . .

In the final analysis she comes by who she is honestly, as she also has many of her extraordinary mother’s attributes and failings, but whatever characteristics she shares with her Daddy or her mother, is an outgrowth of her nature and not a contrivance on her part. It would be interesting to see how many of those traits are inherent in her children, but since that would only put the albatross around their necks it’s best that we just let them be so that they can discover who they are and what they aren’t by themselves . . . they know where to find to us if they want us . . .

Lisa Marie’s infrequent, appearances at ELVIS functions has infuriated fans more than her frequent absences. She’ll drop by if it suits her—like when she was trying to drum up funds for Presley Place, a halfway house for jobless crackheads—or when her presence is mandatory for the good of the business—like when the fans petitioned like never before to have the post office issue an ELVIS Stamp after 5 years of refusals . . . they finally agreed when they realized that they’d sell more stamps than ever and gave in to our demands . . . She’ll drag herself up to the podium, mumble through some hastily prepared 30-second speech, with all the emotional depth of a mop bucket, then scurry back to her limo without looking back or showing a soupcon of gratitude to the fans that have put food on her table and a roof over her head ever since she was born. Her P.R people try to put a spin on it by saying that it’s just because she is so shy, but then there she is smooching and nuzzling with Wacko Jacko in a video while topless . . . She obviously has the strong feelings of resentment that come when a child feels abandoned by the parent; though evidently these feelings of animus are not strong enough to make her walk away from his money and, for that alone, she owes him better than referring to him as: “The little son-of-a-bitch from Memphis that’s buried in the damn backyard,” in her debut single, “Lights Out.”