1993-2000 Lisa Marie Presley

LMP working on her music career, Deseret News - Oct 11, 1992


Another Presley – Elvis’ daughter Lisa Marie – is developing a singing voice in the hopes of starting a music career. She has been singing and writing her own material for demo records.

LMP working on her music career, 21 October 1992


Elvis’ 24 year old daughter is doing her own thing and writing her own material. Insiders say Lisa Marie has an unusual and strong rhythm and blues voice and has recorded some demons for a possible recording deal. Stay tuned.

LMP gives birth to her son, October 21st 1992


Lisa gives birth to son, Ben.

They meet at Brett Livingstone's house, November 1992


Excerpt from “Child Bride” about their meet up together, by Suzanne Finstad





He had become a successful artist, famous for a million-dollar portrait he had painted of Michael Jackson, who had become his personal friend. Brett, the great connector, considered introducing Lisa to Michael. “She had the talent as well as the beauty and the name, so I thought Wow! The sky is the limit. What an image! I had known Michael for six years or more, and I thought maybe I could introduce Lisa to Michael Jackson. I thought, Hey, the person to get is Michael Jackson, because he’s an artist, instead of dealing with businessmen who would just categorize her and work her way up.” Michael had a new record label, Brett knew, and was looking for exciting, undiscovered talent. Who better than Lisa Marie Presley? “I didn’t discuss this with anyone,” said Brett. “I just thought about it and went about my business and thought that sometime in the future Lisa would like to have a conversation with Michael. From what I could see, Lisa was disenchanted with Jerry’s representation because she didn’t like what the head guy at Sony in New York had told her about where she had to begin and what she had to do—that she had to crawl before she walked.” Lisa wanted to emerge a full-blown star, and Michael Jackson, Brett believed, could help her.

Several months after the idea occurred to him, Brett telephoned Lisa, who was taking courses at the Scientology center in Clearwater, Florida. He said, “Lisa, if you’re really serious about your career, why don’t I put you in touch with Michael Jackson?….I think you should meet him and play your music and sing for him, and I think he could really encourage and inspire you on a direction you could take.” Brett told her that Michael had his own company, Nation Records, sponsored by Sony, and that he could “really launch her big time.” Lisa was intrigued.

Brett’s next step was to telephone Michael Jackson. “I said, ‘Michael, what would you say if I found talent for you that had the potential to be number one in the world in the recording industry—beautiful girl, great voice and also a reputation that would be a public relations dream come true?’ and he said, ‘Who are you talking about?’ So I said, ‘Lisa Presley.’ And he said, ‘What? She can’t sing!’ and I said, ‘She can.’ And then I asked, ‘Have you ever met Lisa?’ and he said no.” The conversation, recalled Brett, was brief, followed by lots of other conversations about it. Michael was “amazed at first, and then said, ‘Well get her to send me a tape.’ ”

At the time, neither Michael nor Lisa recalled their fleeting meeting introduction backstage, at the Sahara Tahoe when Lisa was six and Michael was sixteen. Lisa’s close childhood friend Myrna Smith, who was with Jerry and Joe Esposito when they took Lisa to that long-ago concert, confirmed this. “Lisa didn’t even remember meeting Michael as a child,” Myrna said. “She asked me, ‘Did I ever meet Michael Jackson?’ and I said, ‘Don’t you remember? We took you to see the Jacksons.’ ”

When Brett told Lisa about his conversation with Michael, she was offended that she would have to send a demo. She told Brett, “Forget it, I’ll play the tape for him in person.” Lisa called Brett constantly afterward, inquiring about the meeting with Michael. She told Myrna excitedly that Brett had arranged to have Michael and her get together at his house in Pacific Palisades and for Lisa to play her demo tape.

Lisa took her husband Danny, along to that meeting, and the group gathered in Brett’s living room. “Michael…was blown away by her music,” according to Brett. “She played the tape and was really excited that Michael Jackson was here, and at that point, she looked like a fan of his. And he was really tickled to see that she had a lot of potential, but he didn’t think too much more than ‘Wow, Brett is onto something here.’ ” There was, according to Brett, not even the slightest suggestion of anything romantic between Lisa and Michael at that meeting. “Her husband was here.”

Michael carried on with his own career interests after that meeting, but Lisa, recalled Brett, “kept calling me after that. Constantly calling me. And she wanted to get together with Michael more.” Lisa met with Brett a few times to talk about it, remarking that she had “a few things in common with the Jacksons and maybe she should pursue a friendship with Michael.” Brett, still their intermediary, offered to represent Lisa in a business contract with Michael for a recording deal, even though he had an art partnership with Michael and had been his friend for years. Brett had worked up some figures and talked to Michael, who arranged for Brett to take Lisa to meet with Michael Greenberg, the head of Jackson’s company, Nation Records in Santa Monica.

Lisa brought Danny along with her attorney, John Coale. “I didn’t know anything about that business,” said Brett, “but I wanted to make sure that Lisa made a deal at the top level…by saying, ‘Hey, Elvis is the King and she’s the Princess. She’s got the talent. All she needs is Michael to help record at the highest possible level and help her choose the songs and teach her some presence on stage. I was trying to get Michael to…make a deal with Lisa at the top—the deal that the other recording companies were making with Madonna and Barbara Streisand. And he was like, ‘Are you crazy? They have proven themselves.’

And I said, ‘No, make the same deal; a deal over a period of time…based on performance as the records sell. And not only will you make the deal with Lisa, you’ll promote the company.’ And I knew that’s what Lisa would love, if she was put on a pedestal.”

Lisa's Lawyer, John P.Coale on this meeting, November 1992


The newlyweds first met around November 1992, says Lisa Marie’s friend, lawyer John P. Coale, who was advising her at the time. Was it business or pleasure? “It was more of a social meeting,” he says.

The meeting took place in L.A. at a friend’s house. (“Nobody famous,” Coale says.) “She liked him. She thought he was real nice. In the beginning they were friends, just friends. There was no romantic hint of anything at the time. . . . I’m not sure when the romantic thing came in.”

Lisa’s uncle Garry Hovey on their meeting, Larry King, (aired April 16, 2005)


GARY HOVEY, UNCLE: She went to meet with record people, with a manager, and the [music deal] was just about set. She didn’t do the deal because she became pregnant with Ben, her second child, so it all got put on hold a year or two later, whenever she became interested in singing again, which happened to coincide with the time she met with Michael.

ZAHN: Five years into Lisa’s marriage to Danny Keogh, the relationship was buckling. It was during this time that a fledgling friendship with Michael Jackson began to evolve.

“You and me, we could get into a lot of trouble. Think about that, girl,” MJ to Lisa, "Magic and Madness," Lisa Marie, November 1992


“I always liked him,” Lisa Marie recalled. “Michael fascinated me with his talent. I loved watching him dance. He wanted to know me better, but I always thought he was sort of freakish. I didn’t really want to know him any better than I already did.”

At this time, Lisa had recorded four songs produced by her husband. She felt she had a lot to say about her unusual life as daughter of an icon, and she was looking for a way to say it through her lyrics and music. “I had a voice,” she once told me, in retrospect, “but I didn’t have the experience. Things always got too wild when people found out that Elvis’s daughter wanted to sing. It became a matter of deals and money, money, money: I lost my fire for it. I lost the urge to create. I was scared, I guess, so I pulled back.”

She had no confidence in herself as a vocalist,” Said Brett Livingstone Stone. “She was afraid of being compared to Elvis, afraid of rejection. When I suggested Michael could help her, she said, “He’s a superstar, do you really think he’d help me?” After dinner at my house, Lisa played tapes of some of her music, and Michael was blown away. He told her, “You have real talent… a fine voice. You could be a star. Let me see what I can do for you.”

As she sat with him and listened to stories about his life in the business, she found herself falling under his spell. According to Brett Livingstone, when Michael was about to leave, he offered Lisa a penetrating look and in a conspiratorial voice said, “You and me, we could get into a lot of trouble. Think about that, girl.”

San Jose Mercury News , Nov 23, 1992


New once-again mom Lisa Marie Presley, 24, is said to be working on her debut album.

”Lisa was in relentless pursuit of Michael,” Excerpt from Child Bride, February 1, 1993


Lisa was torn. Part of her was in “turmoil,” recalled Brett, “on her mind was ‘I have my kids,’ and she was in turmoil with her husband and what should she do? If she wanted to be a star, she had to really want to live and breathe that.” Michael Jackson also advised Lisa similarly: If she wanted to pursue a singing career, she would have to dedicate herself to it. During the following weeks, Brett found herself the hapless man in the middle, caught between a balking and busy Michael, and an ambivalent yet driven Lisa.

Brett made arrangements for Lisa to visit Michael in Japan while he was on the tour for Dangerous, and tried to facilitate other plans, some of which occurred while others dissipated. According to Brett, Lisa was, “in relentless pursuit of Michael Jackson,” and phoned [Brett] constantly to find out whether the deal would occur. Michael, in Brett’s characterization, was obviously intrigued by the thought of signing Lisa Presley, “but there was more desire on Lisa’s part for something to happen.” Lisa, he recalled, finally said to him, “It doesn’t seem like I can make that deal with him, and I don’t want to push him too much.”

Brett, who was still hoping to bring them together for a record deal, finally arranged for a representative from Michael’s office to send a formal letter to Lisa stating that Michael was still interested in keeping things going. At the same time, Prince also began pursuing Lisa to sign a recording contract.

Lisa celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday with a huge party, planned by Priscilla, at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Prince was among the guests, along with a sprinkling of celebrity Scientologists such as Kirstie Alley, Nicole Kidman, and Juliette Lewis. Lisa invited Michael Jackson as her special guest, “and he would have loved to have gone,” said Brett, “but he had other things.” Brett suggested to Michael that he should at least send Lisa a birthday gift, “so he told me, ‘Well you go get it!’ ” Brett selected, as Michael’s gift to Lisa, an art book on Michelangelo and a silver picture frame in which he placed a photograph of Michael and Lisa’s original meeting in his living room. Brett, attempting to be gallant on Michael’s behalf, wrote sweet birthday inscriptions in the art book and on the birthday card, making them appear to be from Michael. “I was just trying to be a good friend for him,” said Brett. “I went to the party with my son Jason, and when I got there, Lisa was like, ‘Oh! Where’s Michael? I hope it’s all right that Prince is here.’ I said, ‘Michael just couldn’t make it, but here is a gift from him.’ And I didn’t say anything [else].” Lisa, he recalled, “latched onto the gifts excitedly and immediately opened them to check them out.”

He later figured out, said Brett, that he had inadvertently played matchmaker to Michael and Lisa by buying the birthday gifts, for Lisa, seeing the card and the inscription in the art book, both of which she believed to have been written by Michael, misinterpreted Brett’s affectionate words as an indication that Michael Jackson had feelings for her. “I wasn’t trying to bring two people together to get married. I look back on it now as a sign that [she was thinking], Wow! He really cares about me. And she secretly wanted a relationship with him, because I always talked about him as a passionate man [who was] extremely loving…and that attracted Lisa, that loving part, and loving children.”

Lisa never knew that Brett wrote the birthday card and signed her book. “I can’t recall what I wrote exactly in the book or card,” said Brett, “but that might have been something she read over and over again and thought, Jeez! And afterwards, Lisa kept calling me, and eventually, after the many calls and pursuits and my little bit of fairy dust that I sprinkled about the place, hey, those guys [got] together, and I thought, ‘Maybe they’ll record something,’

And I remember Lisa saying, ‘Brett, what do you want out of this?’ and Michael Jackson asked me the same thing, and I thought, ‘Boy, there must be something happening here.’ I told Lisa, ‘You can give me whatever you think is fair,’ and I told Michael the same. I thought up the idea and executed it, and I stayed on top of it. Any other business person would be claiming something, but since I am an artist, I told them, ‘If you do record something, give me a job at art direction instead of hiring somebody else.’ So we didn’t think anything else or more about that other than that it was going to happen.”

Brooke Shields on Michael kind of asking her to marry him around the same time, February 1993


What did I think of his marriage to Lisa Marie? I think we’re not dealing with convention, so somebody like Michael, he’s not going to just fall in love with somebody and get married. I think there were a few people that he could identify with, and what I know about Lisa Marie, she was very sweet, she could identify with him, they could talk about things that I’m sure she understood with regards to her father. So I think he tried to create a convention for himself. There were times when he would ask me to marry him, and I would say, “You have me for the rest of your life, you don’t need to marry me, I’m going to go on and do my own life and have my own marriage and my own kids, and you’ll always have me.” ]

He never actually formally proposed to me, though. He would sort of say, “Why don’t we adopt a child together? The way your heart works is what I want in my life,” and I said to him, “You’re always going to have my heart, we don’t need to adopt a baby, and I think it’s wonderful that you want to have children, adopt a child.” I wanted to fall in love and get married and have my own babies, and I said, “I don’t think that you need to necessarily do that.” This was just before he married Lisa Marie in the Nineties, I guess. He had discussed it with me, and I said, “I don’t think that’s the best thing to do for me.”

LMP embarking on a singing career, Pittsburg Post Gazette, 23 Feb 1993


Lisa Marie Presley, only daughter of Elvis, has decided to embark on a singing career. It’s all tentative, but this week’s People magazine says that Presley – who looks a powerful lot like her cultural icon daddy – has recorded four demon tapes produced by her husband, musician Danny Keough. Her tastes run to rock and R&B, and a friend says she sounds a lot like a black Bonnie Raitt.” Mercy. But don’t get too hepped up: Presley, the mother of two children, won’t do anything too mondo until her 4 month old is a little bigger. However she continues to dye her blond hair black. Tell me that doesn’t mean something.

LMP on her music career, Anchorage Daily News, 24 February, 1993


“I’ve always had an ear for it, and I’ve always felt music,” the 25 year old daughter of Elvis and Priscilla tells People magazine. “I’ve been around it all my life. I definitely have it in me.”

“Dark hair really suits my personality,” she says. “I’m pretty aggressive and fiery. I don’t act like a blonde.”

MJ and Lisa get closer, "Child Bride," Late February, 1993


In late February, a few weeks after her 25th birthday, Jerry Schilling received a mysterious phone call from Lisa. “Something is going on,” she told Jerry, “but I can’t tell you what. And it has nothing to do with you, but I’m not going to continue with this record contract right now.” Lisa told him, said Jerry, that she was busy with her new baby and wanted to put the Epic deal on hold. Jerry, who had no idea Lisa had even met with Michael Jackson, simply said fine and puzzled over what might be happening in Lisa’s life.

Mike Edwards, who had also remained close to Brett after his breakup with Priscilla, began getting phone calls from an amazed Brett about this time. “He’s saying, ‘Gosh, Lisa’s calling me and Lisa’s really interested in Michael!’ ” Brett’s impression, said Mike Edwards, was that Michael was absorbed in his work, but that Lisa was really interested in him. “And I said, ‘Come on! What do you mean?’ [Brett] said, ‘You haven’t met him, but he’s very charismatic.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but I can’t believe it.’ He said, ‘Yeah, she’s kind of pursuing him.’ And I went, ‘My God! What’s gonna happen?’” “I could see that Lisa fell in love with him,” confirmed Brett. What attracted her in part, he felt, was that Michael was not after her money. “I think she didn’t know him very well, though. She didn’t know his quirks and eccentric lifestyle, and she thought, This guy is going to be great. A stepfather for my kids.”

Lisa, according to Brett, was the one who was in pursuit. “I think it was the passion of a woman who fell in love. And Michael wasn’t even interested at all. And he is a gentleman, he wouldn’t have wanted to pull her away from her marriage to Danny. And she pursued him. Family friend Bob Wall, who heard about it after the fact, confirmed this. “I know that Lisa is the one who pursued the relationship.” She did it, Bob felt, to create an identity separate from the Presley name, to be known as something other than “the daughter of.” “Lisa really wants to be credible,” said Bob. “You’ve got her father, who’s a genius. Her mother’s done incredibly well. And all she’s got is a lot of money. So maybe that’s important to her, to create her own identity.”

Considered attending Oscars together, Excerpt Child Bride, Around March 21st 1993


Brett, seeing the progression of the friendship, suggested that Michael take Lisa to the Oscar ceremony that March, just as he had escorted Madonna the year before, but Michael balked, since Lisa was a married woman. The relationship intensified on Michael’s part that fall however, after 13 year-old Jordan Chandler accused him of child molestation, causing a scandal to erupt worldwide. Later, Michael would quietly escort Lisa to the Jackson Family Honors.

Lisa, who was then spending time with Myrna Smith, a childhood friend who use to sing with Lisa when Lisa was a child, told Myrna about her secret romance with Michael Jackson. Myrna perceived that Lisa felt sorry for Michael because of the sexual molestation charges and the devastating effect the scandal had had on his career and his image. Myrna also believed Lisa had sincere feelings for Michael. “Yes, she did, according to what she told me. She did. She’s like her father—they like the underdog…she did it for her own reasons, but she didn’t do it because Michael coerced her. She genuinely cared about him and she thought he cared for her.”

Myrna, who knew and knew of Michael through music circles, tried to warn Lisa about the relationship, which she considered both dangerous and absurd. “I can only guess what his motives were, and I could only tell what I thought, what a smart businessman he was, and that he was only pursuing her for what she could do for him, and that he wasn’t interested in women. And she told me he was.” Lisa did not tell Myrna whether she and Michael had sex, though Brett believed they did. “Yeah, sure, I think, because of what happened. I didn’t want to ask any questions. I could have asked Lisa the nitty-gritty.”

Michael and Lisa attend a Jimmy Carter fundraiser together, May 5, 1993


Michael is invited by ex president Jimmy Carter to Atlanta in order to boost the Atlanta Immunisation Drive. Afterwards, Michael joins Ted Turner, Jane Fonda, Emmanuel Lewis and Lisa Marie Presley in the front row during the Kids Celebration at OMNI.

”You look like a woman who needs to let go and have some fun,” Michael to Lisa, Magic/Madness on Lisa Marie, Mid 1993


He truly was misunderstood, he told her. “I know you think I’m gay,” he said. “But I’m not. I get tired of people thinking I am gay. But, oh well, fuck them. I know you’ve heard a lot of things about me, in fact, he continued, but most of it isn’t true. And that stuff that is true, you shouldn’t hold against me.” He winked at her.

“Hey, I’m a married woman,” Lisa said. “And you’re coming on to me.”

“Yes, but are you happy?” Michael asked.

“No.”

“See?” Michael remarked. “I knew that. You look like a woman who needs to let go and have some fun. You look like a woman who needs to hook up with me.”

Lisa recalled, “I thought to myself, Wow, this is a real guy. He swears. He’s funny. I told him, ‘Dude, if people knew who the hell you really are, they would be so surprised. People wouldn’t think I was so crazy for being into you if they saw who you really are; that you sit around and you drink and you curse and you’re fucking funny, and you have a bad mouth and you don’t have that high voice all the time.’”

He said, “Well, just don’t tell them.” I thought he was normal and that everything you saw of him publically was just a mask.”

Lisa recalled, “As time went on, Michael and I talked more, I thought, I’m getting to know the real man here. He puts on an act for outsiders, this sort of victim thing, I thought, but I’m the one seeing the real deal, the real person. I started thinking I was special, that he was opening up to me as he never had to anyone else. He made me feel that way. He can be very seductive when he’s pulling you in.”

Magic/Madness on Lisa Marie, August, 1993


“I was in on the beginning of the molestation stuff, and I was getting the phone calls, and he was telling me that it was extortion,” she recalled. “I believed him at the time. I mean, I was convinced. He was freaking out. I believe that he didn’t do anything wrong, and that he was being wrongly accused and yes, I started falling for him. I wanted to save him. I felt that I could do it.”

Michael’s addiction to painkillers according to Magic/Madness, September 1993


When Michael telephoned Lisa from overseas in September 1993, he was high, incoherent and delusional. Alarmed, Lisa attempted to convince Michael to do as she had once done, enter a rehabilitation centre.

“Absolutely, I felt that I had a responsibility to save him,” she said. “I don’t know the psychology of it and what it had to with my father. I only know what I felt.”

Michael cancels world tour, enters rehab, November 12, 1993


Michael announces he is cancelling his world tour to seek treatment for an addiction to painkillers.

Lisa was supposed to fly in to his Puerto Rico Dangerous World Tour Date, November 21 1993


In the Diane Sawyer interview Lisa Marie says she was supposed to fly in to see him on this date.

Allegedly proposes to her over the phone at this point, Magic/Madness, November/December, 1993


Michael decided to calm himself by calling the one person who could somehow help him forget that his career hung in the balance: Lisa.

She had certainly been persistent in her pursuit of him. She left telephone numbers for a house she was renting in Canoga Park, California.

She also left the number of the new three acre estate which had just purchased and was getting ready to occupy on Long Valley Road in Hidden Hills.

Then, just to be sure, she left the number where she could be reached in Clearwater, Florida, where she was planning to spend time at the Scientology retreat. She even sent him party balloons with messages attached. Somehow, she could always put a smile back on his face, even if it was just her raspy voice proclaiming, “Oh, fuck them!” He found her in Canoga Park.

Michael valued Lisa’s settling effect on him, so much so that during his phone conversation, he posed a question that surprised both of them. “If I asked you to marry me, would you do it?” Was this a joke? A hypothetical? Or was it a dare for Lisa to take him seriously? If it was a dare, Lisa was the woman to take it – even though she was still married to Danny Keough. Without missing a beat, she replied, “I would do it.” Michael didn’t say a word, at first. He then said, “Hold on, I have to use the bathroom.”

When he finally did speak into the phone again, he was speaking to his new fiancée. “My love for you is real,” Michael told Lisa. “Please, believe me.”

Unbeknownst to even Michael’s attorneys, Lisa Marie Presley had also tried to influence his decision to settle. A seasoned survivor of many publicity wars, she had long through that Michael should end the matter with a cash pay out. She was finally able to convince him that, as she later put it, “some things, like a good night’s sleep, are more important than public opinion.”

He wanted to get on with his life, Michael said, so that he could finally marry Lisa. Not much movement had occurred in their relationship since his odd proposal to her on the telephone, and he was afraid that she was becoming impatient with him. “The only thing I got out of therapy is that it’s my responsibility to have a good life,” he said, “and maybe I can have that with Lisa. I don’t want to lose her now.”

Michael returns to LA, December 10, 1993


Michael returns to Neverland.

Lisa considering marrying Michael, Excerpt Child Bride, Christmas 1993


By Christmas 1993, Lisa was discussing with Myrna the possibility of marrying Michael Jackson. “He told her,” said Myrna, “that she was the only woman he could see himself marrying. And I was like, ‘You gotta be kidding.’ ” Myrna recalled that Lisa responded, “Myrna, you don’t understand.”

Lisa and Michael together as a couple, Magic/Madness January 1994


One of his closest advisers says: “Michael was living full time at Neverland Ranch. And all of a sudden, here comes Lisa Marie on the stairs in a bathrobe. We thought, “Well, hey, what’s up here? She spent the night up there? With Michael? And then here comes Michael down the stairs in his Mickey Mouse pajamas with a big grin on his face. The two were lovey dovey at breakfast and she hasn’t left his side since then. “

According to staff at Neverland, they knew things were serious when Lisa Marie began ordering around the servants. “Michael started talking about his “girlfriend” Lisa Marie. And she was around all the time,” said one.

“No woman has ever given orders to Michael’s servants, except for Elizabeth Taylor – and even she checks with Michael first before she asks for a Diet Coke.”

He was kissing her fairly passionately and, from many accounts, in public places. He seemed to enjoy doing it, too.

“I’m not a woman who goes for the norm, anyway,” Lisa said in explaining her attraction to him. “I like strange guys, the ones on the edge, the ones with an edge, the ones with fire in their bellies. That was Michael, to me.”

“Apparently, Michael Jackson is a freak in bed,” said Lisa’s friend Monica Pastelle. “Lisa said he was amazing, and she’s been around. Everyone was saying, ‘No way, Lisa. It can’t be true. Michael Jackson? Are we talking about the Michael Jackson, the one with the glove?’” However, she wasn’t joking, and it wasn’t long before she didn’t think it was funny, either.”

“He liked her to wear jewelry in bed. They were into role playing games, though Lisa would never say who was playing what kind of role.”

When Lisa didn’t become immediately pregnant, even before they were married, he began to express his disappointment. “I want children,” he said, “and I thought we would be expecting one within a couple of weeks of making love. But Lisa says it takes time. I don’t have time,” he said. “I want it to happen, now. I want children so badly.”

Michael and Lisa going to a movie together, David Foster’s memoir Hit Man, sometime early 1994


Michael was also interesting to hang out with. The better I got to know him, the more elusive he seemed. One moment, in a little-boy voice, he would curse the head of Sony Music. “That Tommy Mottola is a mean person,” he’d say, sounding like a six-year-old. In the studio, he’d be a pro, a regular guy, and we really connected. (He struck me as Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly rolled into one). And with Lisa Marie Presley, whom he was dating at the time, he would be somebody else entirely.

Interestingly enough, my then-wife Linda had once dated Elvis, so she and Lisa Marie actually knew each other fairly well. You might say for a brief period Linda had played the role of Lisa’s step mom.

Anyway, the kids were visiting from Los Angeles – three of my daughters and Linda’s two sons – and one night they decided they wanted to go to the movies. We were staying at the Plaza Hotel, and Michael rented me a magnificent suite – on a low floor – that must have had six bedrooms. It was a palace, a lot better than the Zen-like concrete bunker at the Delano.

“I can’t go to the movies,” Michael said. We all knew what he meant: He couldn’t go out in public without creating a shit storm among the paparazzi. And one of the kids said, “We can dress you up and disguise you.”

And that’s what they did. They got in an elevator and went down to his suite and dressed him up in their own clothes. They put a scarf on him, and some jeans, and they tucked his hair under a cap and turned it to the side, gangster-style. Michael wasn’t wild about hiding the curl, though; he wanted it right out there on his forehead, for the whole world to see. The kids told him he had to hide the curl because it was a dead giveaway, but he was adamant. “No, no, I’ve got to have my curl out,” he said. I thought that was very telling. He didn’t want to be seen, but he kind of wanted to be seen – which I guess is often the issue if you’re famous.

Then they argued about what movie to see. My kids voted for Speed; Michael was more interested in Little Big League. Hmmm.

We had the valet bring the van around, and we piled in without incident. There were some paparazzi out front, but they must have looked at us and figured we were nobodies. And it was very interesting, because Michael and Lisa Marie got separated when everyone scrambled into the van, and it was clear that he wanted her to sit next to him. On the way to the movie theater, he turned to her and said, “Lisa, here. Come here. Sit here.” He said it just like a regular man, not in that little-boy voice of his. It was like, You’re going to sit with me, woman, and she did. I was very impressed, but I was also confused. I mean, who was this guy?

Maybe she brought out the testosterone in him. I don’t know. But I do know this: she loved him. And that relationship became one of the biggest tabloid nightmares of all time.