Fans mourn the loss of the King’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, at Graceland

Memphis — Some wrote messages on the stone walls outside Graceland. This legendary Memphis mansion housed Elvis Presley’s studded jumpsuit and Lisa’s Marie, which featured gold bathroom fittings. Others left flowers.

A day after the death of singer-songwriter and Elvis’ only daughter Lisa Marie Presley, 54, fans mourned her death and remembered how Presley impacted their lives. rice field.

At Graceland on Friday, Stephanie T. Perez, whose aunt taught Elvis at school and his grandfather worked for him as an upholsterer, said years before the king of rock and roll died. He said he visited the same place as his mother. she was two years old

She “thought it was important to be on the street the day his daughter died,” said Perez, now 47. They hate it because of Elvis’ legacy.You hate it because her life was cut short. But most of all, it’s sad for the children and Priscilla. ”

Lisa Marie Presley, who owns her mansion and her former estate in Graceland, will be buried there, according to the Lede Company, which represents her daughter Riley Keough. “Her final resting place of Lisa Marie is in Graceland with her beloved son Ben,” she said in a statement.

As of Friday, it was not immediately clear what caused Presley’s death. Her mother, Priscilla Presley, said in a statement on Thursday that her daughter received treatment but other “She was the most passionate, strong, loving woman I’ve ever known,” Presley said. Lisa Marie Presley was famous from the moment she was born as the daughter of the world’s biggest star. And while she continued to try to carve her own way as a singer, she was best known as a rock star queen of sorts:
She is the only daughter of Elvis and she was married to Michael Jackson from 1994 to 1996.

But she lived a turbulent life full of losses. Her father died when she was nine years old. She had been married and divorced four times and also struggled with an opioid addiction. Her son Benjamin Keough committed suicide in 2020. Six months before her own death, she wrote of her grief over his loss, stating that he had “devastated” her but that she was moving on for her three daughters. rice field.

Fans mourned her death outside Graceland, the eclectic eight-bedroom Memphis mansion that Mrs. Presley inherited after her father’s death and opened to the public as a museum in 1982. .

Graceland houses over a million artifacts, including a faux-fur cocoon bed with a stereo in the canopy. Then there was Mrs. Presley’s private her jet, Lisa Marie, with four televisions and her 52-speaker stereo. Within hours of the news of Presley’s passing late Thursday, a dozen or so Elvis fans arrived at Graceland in coats and gloves on a cold, windy night.

Kimber Tomlinson, 49, remembered a Memphis Elvis fan falling in love with Lisa Marie from the beginning.The first time she remembered Elvis was about a week after his funeral when her mother It was when I took her to Graceland, she added.

“Sad, very sad,” said Mr Tomlinson. “Her life has always been in the limelight,” she added, referring to Lisa Marie. “This family has had its fair share of heart attacks and heartbreaks.”

Ms. Tomlinson recited the long history of loss among the Presley family:
Gladys, Elvis’s mother died at age 46 in 1948; Elvis died in 1977 of heart failure at age 42; Lisa Marie’s son, Benjamin Keough, died by suicide in 2020 at age 27; and now there was Lisa Marie’s death.

The sprawling estate opened for business as usual on Friday, just days after Ms. Presley had joined fans at the mansion on Sunday to celebrate what would have been Elvis’s 88th birthday.

Jason Hanley, the vice president of education at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, observed that Ms. Presley’s death was a cultural touchstone of sorts because she was the daughter of the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” and had been married to the “King of Pop.” Her death, he said, was imbued with a particular wistfulness and nostalgia for an era that had changed American music.

“She was the heir to Elvis’s empire and rock ‘n’ roll royalty, and she recorded three great albums in which she wanted to say something about herself in the shadow of her father’s legacy,” he said. “Her death is heartbreaking for us because it marks the passage of time.”

One of her former husbands, the actor Nicolas Cage, told The Hollywood Reporter he was devastated by Ms. Presley’s death. “Lisa laughed the hardest I’ve ever met,” he was quoted as saying. “She lights up every room and makes me heartbroken. Time together.”

Mr. Presley released her three albums, during which she set out to carve out her own musical path, taking over her father’s music. His father’s unique cocktail of blues, gospel, pop and country made him the first major rock star and changed American music. .

She said she hesitated to base it on her last name. However, her record was overruled by her label, which created her personal “Lights Out” – “Somebody turned the lights out in Memphis. My family disappeared buried there.” – Her debut single in 2003. Her father’s legacy, larger than life, stayed with her until her final days.On Tuesday, she called him out again at the Golden Globes, telling the TV host that she was going to play in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis. Best Actor winner Austin Butler says he plays his father perfectly.

But at Graceland Friday, it was Lisa Marie that Presley fans remembered. Perez left her own message on the walls of Graceland:
“Thank you, LMP.”

Cindy Wolfe interviews Memphis and Nicole Sperling from Los Angeles.