1993-2000 Lisa Marie Presley

Nicolas Cage Doesn’t Want To Badmouth Jackson, Howard Stern, Popdirt, June 6, 2002


Nicolas Cage was on the Howard Stern show Thursday morning where he sidestepped his sex life with Lisa Marie Presley. He said the relationship is good but he’s not going to talk about his sex life on the show. Howard asked him if it bothers him that Lisa Marie had been married to Michael Jackson a few years back. Nic said he’s heard that Michael is a nice man and he didn’t want to bad mouth him.

Artist and Photographer Helnwein, 8 Oct 2002


iwc:
You’ve met some very interesting American Pop Icons in your lifetime.
What was meeting Michael Jackson and Andy Warhol like?

Helnwein:
Michael Jackson was really interesting. He was very smart and very intelligent. I remember talking with him for an hour, and he brought Lisa (Marie Presley) along with him. So we talked about art and he was asking me about what techniques I use and telling me about what paintings he liked. And then he left. And Lisa looked at me and said, “Oh my god. He was totally normal. That’s amazing!” I mean, this is his wife saying this!”

Did The King Ruin Lisa Marie’s Marriage? J. Randy Taraborrelli, Daily Mail, 2002
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-150606/Did-The-King-destroy-Lisa-Maries-marriage.html


A couple of weeks ago, Lisa Marie Presley and her husband of three months, actor Nicolas Cage, watched on TV news the disturbing footage of Michael Jackson – her ex-husband – dangling his infant son from a balcony in Germany.

Afterwards, Elvis’s only daughter, who bears an uncanny resemblance to her father, had a furious row with Cage.

Nicolas, like most people, thought it a bizarre and careless thing to have done – the clumsy way Jackson held the baby, Prince Michael II, so precariously over a ledge, with a cloth thrown over its head.

However, Lisa Marie felt that Michael’s actions were not at all disturbing and maintained the incident had been blown out of proportion. ‘Michael would never hurt one of his children,’ Lisa Marie said. ‘It was the camera angle that made it look so dangerous.’

But, as she later recounted to one of her friends, Nicolas demanded to know why she was always so protective of Michael.

‘What is that about?’ he asked, trying to dig to the core of her feelings for her second husband. ‘I know you’re not still in love with the guy. Or are you?’

Six years after her divorce from him, Lisa Marie Presley does have strong feelings for Michael Jackson – though probably not of the romantic variety.

She speaks to him often and visits him at his Neverland home in California at least once a month.

For Nicolas to even comment on the long-standing, albeit odd, relationship was not a good idea. Lisa Marie loathes it when others attempt to probe her psyche. ‘Stop trying to analyse me,’ she told him, angrily.

‘It went on from there, a disagreement about Lisa not wanting Nicolas to delve into the reasons for her friendship with Michael,’ said Monica Pastelle, a friend of Lisa Marie’s.

‘Throughout his relationship with her, Nicolas was always asking Lisa questions and trying to figure her out. I think, though, that he learned what many people already know: you can’t figure out Lisa Marie Presley.’

Two weeks after that row, Cage filed for divorce. It was his second marriage and her third.

Those who have watched Lisa Marie endure the ups and downs of life in her father’s shadow are now wondering if she will ever find a man who can lay the ghost of Elvis to rest.

She has been married to a little known musician, her first husband, Danny Keough; a global superstar, Michael Jackson; and now an Oscar-winning actor. And she hasn’t found happiness with any of them.

Married just 107 days, Lisa Marie and Cage spent most of their time as newlyweds at her $2 million estate in Hidden Hills, outside Los Angeles. However, Nicolas continued to maintain his $7 million home in Bel-Air.

Though they planned to take a one year lease on a seven-bedroom home next door to actress Michelle Pfeiffer, they changed their minds at the last minute. So the couple never officially moved in with one another.

‘I’m really crushed by the way things have turned out,’ said Jerry Schilling, a longtime friend of the Presley family. ‘I know Lisa loved Nicolas. I saw them together. The way she felt for him was obvious. I thought this would last. None of us saw it coming.’

Perhaps they should have done. But basic personality differences between Lisa Marie and Nicolas Cage were obvious from the start – highlighted by a bitter row just before the wedding. In July, during a trip on Cage’s yacht, the Weston – named after his ten-year-old son by actress Patricia Arquette – Lisa threw her $65,000 engagement ring overboard.

The couple made it up and the marriage ceremony went ahead in Hawaii on August 10. In a strapless cream gown with a 6ft train, Lisa looked both vulnerable and innocent that day. And in a moving exchange before she spoke her vows, she reassured her mother, Priscilla Presley, that she was doing the right thing.

‘I promise you, Mom,’ she said, ‘I will not have three failed marriages.’ She didn’t dream that she and Cage would turn out to have so little in common or that it would matter so much.

Lisa Marie, 34, is a loner and a committed follower of Scientology, the controversial religion which numbers many of Hollywood’s elite as members.

She likes her solitude and enjoys long walks during which she can clear her head. She’s moody, too. One moment, up. The next, down. Way down. In contrast, Cage is an altogether bouncier individual: out of bed at five in the morning, ready for the new day, anxious to discuss big plans and new ideas.

Lisa Marie is also an early-riser, but only to see her two children, Danielle, 13, and Benjamin, ten (by her first husband) off to school.

She then drags herself back to bed until she feels like waking up again.

‘Lisa is such a sour-puss in the morning,’ Cage once complained. ‘She’s so negative it brings me down and ruins my morning.’

Their interests are also profoundly different. The more cerebral Cage enjoys reading about philosophy and has deep discussions with friends. Lisa Marie prefers romance novels, mysteries and other works of fiction.

‘Nicolas can spend hours with a book that doesn’t interest me at all,’ she once said, privately. ‘That’s all fine and good – except for the fact that he then wants to explain it to me and he wants me to enjoy hearing about it. Forget it! That’s not going to happen.’

He watches educational television. She prefers soaps and sitcoms. He’s usually charming and handles himself with diplomacy. She’s blunt, speaks her mind and doesn’t care what people think about it, or her.

Money was a sore subject from the start, too. Early on, Nicolas tried to advise Lisa, the sole heir to her father’s $100 million plus estate, on certain Presley family investments. She wouldn’t allow it.

‘It was one thing after another over three-and-a-half months,’ said Monica Pastelle. ‘A lot of bickering and bitching, and not much sex. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that they were probably intimate only three or four times after they married.

‘It might have helped if they’d actually moved in together. But Lisa said that she didn’t want to live in a house that smelled of cigar smoke, and Nic was not willing to give up his cigars.’

On November 22, Lisa Marie and Cage posed for celebrity photographer Annie Lebovitz for a magazine spread. Though the couple endeavoured to maintain a civilised front, it was clear to observers that something was already wrong.

‘It was tense,’ said a source. ‘At one point, she touched him and he recoiled, as if bitten by a snake.’

The next day, the Cages were scheduled to attend the Los Angeles premiere of Nicolas’s new movie, Adaptation. The evening started out badly, according to sources close to the couple, with a disagreement over Lisa Marie’s wardrobe.

‘Lisa Marie walked into the living room in an over-size orange and red sweat shirt, a pair of blue combat pants and orange tennis shoes,’ says a friend of the couple’s.

‘Nic was crestfallen. You could see a look of disbelief spread across his face. “Please tell me you’re not wearing that to my premiere,” he said.’ Lisa Marie just threw her husband an icy smile.

Nicolas went to the bar, poured himself a brandy and threw it back. He then changed into a redstriped shirt and awful, orange jacket so that at least he and Lisa Marie would appear coordinated.

When Lisa Marie’s mother, Priscilla, saw photos from the event the next day, she was alarmed at how unhappy the couple looked. In the company of a household employee, she challenged her daughter about her choice of clothes.

‘I want to have a music career! I have to look hip,’ Lisa Marie argued back.

‘You have to dress like a movie star’s wife, Lisa,’ Priscilla told her. ‘Not a silly rap star.’

She threw her mother a scathing look and walked away. It was the very next day that Nicolas Cage filed for divorce.

Priscilla was distraught. She had had confided to her friends that, even though the age difference between the two is negligible (at 38, he’s just four years older), she was concerned that Lisa Marie may have been looking for a father-figure in Nicolas, much the way she herself had in Elvis Presley.

‘I was just a kid when I married Elvis, but he really was a father-figure in so many ways, which is one of the reasons we were never intimate after Lisa Marie was born,’ Priscilla has confided.

‘I want more than that for Lisa. But Nicolas is so much more mature, so much more sensible – and I have seen him take her to task once or twice in a way that was a little too parental.’

Lisa likes laughing, and she likes making people laugh,’ says Monica Pastelle. ‘She’s as much of a kid as her own kids and you can see that when she’s with them.

‘She has struggled for years to come to an understanding with Priscilla. And she’d managed just that. For her to now start working to try to please Nicolas was just not on. He was always telling her to grow up.’

For his part, Cage is devastated by the split. He knew Lisa Marie could be a challenge but he loved her anyway.

‘He loved her indomitability, her enormous strength,’ said one of his close friends. ‘He wasn’t crazy about the fact that she swears like a truck driver. However, he did think he could be the one for her to lean on. She wanted that, too, more than anything.’

However, Samantha Kaplan, an acquaintance of the Presley family, believes Lisa Marie had embarked on this marriage without a thought for its long-term viability.

‘She loved Nicolas, yes. But was it the kind of love that would guarantee future happiness for her, or was she just living blindly in temporary ecstasy? She didn’t take the time to find out,’ says Ms Kaplan.

‘She so much wants to be the little princess who lives happily ever after. She talked herself into believing it was true.

‘Nic has a winning way with her children, and that was also a factor in her decision to marry him. I do think she’s willing to compromise, to settle for less out of necessity in a belief that great love will never really happen for her.’

There are cynics who say that Nicolas Cage was following more than his heart when he began wooing Lisa Marie two years ago.

He owns a vast and valuable Elvis Presley collection – including The King’s 1959 Cadillac Eldorado, worth more than £200,000. There was speculation that Lisa Marie represented nothing more than just another collectible item for him.

‘Well, that’s just not true,’ said a close friend of Cage this week. ‘It’s ridiculous. Nic thought she was the woman for him. But after he really got to know her, he realised that she’s not.

A few days ago, Lisa Marie was shopping for Christmas gifts with a friend in a suburban shopping mall in LA. Though her hair was pulled up under a large cap and her eyes hidden by dark shades, she still drew stares from passers-by. ‘Why can’t we be the way we were when we first met?’ she was heard to ask her friend.

‘I tried with Nicolas, I really did. Those first few weeks were so good,’ she said, wistfully. ‘I still love him. I wish we could go back.

‘The first few weeks of love are always good, aren’t they?’ observed her friend.

‘Well, I’ll be OK,’ Lisa Marie said, ignoring her friend’s observation. ‘I can get through it. I can handle it. I like being on my own, anyway.’

For the moment, that would seem to be where her future lies.

Jermaine on Larry King Live, January 9, 2003


KING: Michael Jackson and his ex-wife, Lisa Marie Presley. Are they friendly?

JERMAINE JACKSON: Yes. Yes. Very much.

KING: So even though the marriage ended, they’re still remain friends.

JERMAINE JACKSON: Yes.

CALLER: Hey, Jeremy, one question I’ve had is Elvis Presley. Is Michael a fan of his? Because they’re so much alike.

JERMAINE JACKSON: Yes, very much. We’re fans of Elvis, too. We grew up watching his movies, everything. We like him.

KING: Did you ever meet him?

JERMAINE JACKSON: We met him one time in the elevator in…

KING: Vegas?

JERMAINE JACKSON: I think it was Tahoe. And he came and we were doing a show there. And he came in and we were coming down or some were going up. And he said — something like, Oh, yeah, you Jackson boys. But we were in awe because it’s Elvis.

KING: Michael was there, too?

JERMAINE JACKSON: Yes.

KING: It’s Elvis. So it’s the Jackson 5 and Elvis on this elevator? Just an ordinary little elevator trip.

JERMAINE JACKSON: Yes.

Nicolas Cage, Barbara Walters, Oscars Special, March 23 2003


Walters: Did Lisa Marie ever discussed Michael Jackson or did her marriage to him ever gave you any pause?

Cage: No. I never… I met the man once, I was still Nicolas Coppola and I’m sure he doesn’t remember… but it didn’t… it didn’t come up to me. That was her past. It wasn’t an issue.

LMP interview, Papermag, 2003


After decades of running from the press, this record is enabling Presley to settle the score. Her marriages to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage, along with her involvement in the Church of Scientology, have swamped scandal sheets. And once again, Presley is eager to clear up all the bullshit. “I’ve developed a reptile skin to it,” Presley says of the media. “I didn’t want to address them. I went: ‘Fuck that! Fuck them!’ It got out of control. Jesus, its all a misconception in some sense. The biggest misconception is that I married Michael [Jackson] for some reason, that I’m some wannabe pop star, wannabe whatever. And Nic [Cage] and I — they love to say we got married because he is an Elvis fanatic. That really pissed me off — and that I could marry somebody for any other reason other than the fact that I fell in love with them. There’s nothing in me that’s a pretense. Everything’s right there, almost to a fault. The biggest misconception about me is to even look for a fucking motive. I’m not trying to climb some ladder.”

Jackson had aggressively courted Presley with flowers, presents and phone calls. They got married in May of 1994 in the Dominican Republic. At the time, Jackson had been accused of sexual misconduct with a 13-year-old boy. More jaw-dropping than the couple’s seemingly staged smooch at the MTV Video Music Awards was their televised interview with Diane Sawyer in 1995, where she professed her love for Jackson. “I was really naive,” Presley explains, narrowing her blue eyes into slits. “Its like if you watch yourself talking with a blanket over your head and you pull it off and go, ‘Aaah! There you are.’”

Presley and Jackson have had a few “benign” conversations recently, but, she adds, “I wouldn’t consider us friends.” They didn’t speak for four years, and Presley doesn’t seem surprised or saddened by the recent downpour of negative Jackson publicity.

What hurt Presley the most about that relationship is that, as his wife, she supported Jackson during his darkest hours. Her face twists with visible pain as I press the Jackson issue further. “I didn’t want to get into this,” she moans, shifting in her seat. “But I want to say this because it’s important: I didn’t feel appreciated [by Jackson]. That was why I left. It might have hit him later because I never took or wanted anything. He may have realized that at some point. I have no idea.” When Presley and Jackson’s union dissolved 19 months after they wed, she suffered a physical breakdown, which she attributes to stress and mercury fillings that were in her teeth and “poisoning” her body.

LMP, Toronto Sun – 2003


“The thing is that I would have never had children with somebody I didn’t think I could be connected to for the rest of my life. Somewhere along the line, I had enough sense to know that.”

[…]

Which brings us to Jackson and what she thought of the recent and controversial Martin Bashir TV documentary on Jackson, which raised fears again the pop star was having inappropriate relationships with children.

“I thought what everyone else thought — it seemed manipulated,” she said.

Still, she added she wasn’t surprised at how strange and possibly dangerous Jackson came across. “Honestly, not really. If I thought he was that okay (a guy), I would have stayed.”

L

MP, Blender Magazine – 2003


FAMOUS SINCE THE moment she was born on February 1, 1968, Lisa Marie Presley has spent most of her 35 years ducking the spotlight: the glare that will always surround her father, Elvis Aron, and the flashbulbs that popped around two of her three husbands: Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage.

[…]

What inspires you to write?

Pain. I use songs as weapons. I’ve written some really good, nasty songs about people I’ve been involved with and then I make sure they hear it somehow. “Better Beware” is like that, “Gone,” too–I was pissed off.

Is “Gone” about Nicolas Cage?

[Raises eyebrows] Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know.

How’s your love life at the moment?

Quiet. It needs to stay quiet right now. I have something else to focus on, thank God. If I don’t have something to keep me busy, I get into all kinds of trouble.

Do you ever think that maybe you got married too young?

No, but I live my life in reverse. [Presley married fellow Scientologist Danny Keough when she was 20.] All the friends I had back then were crazy. Now they’re married with kids, and I’ve turned back into a fucking 12-year-old. So that’s funny. I got married early and had two kids and lived very stably for six years and then went fucking crazy.

Like going from Danny Keough… to Michael Jackson!

You know, nobody knows him. He’s like the Wizard of Oz, working this whole machine about himself. And he doesn’t let a lot of people see who he really is, but he let me see, and he was very normal. I felt like I was talking to someone I knew, like a brother. OK, maybe we shouldn’t have gotten married, but we were both raised a little differently and we were in situations that normal people would not be in, so we had a connection.

I don’t see why people can’t see that. They kept saying, “She wants a singing career, she wants this, she wants that,” and I’m like, “Wait a minute: I have never once, of my own free will, been in the spotlight.” I got his stigma, I was caught in his loop. We’re not in contact now.

Do you now think, “Was I crazy?”

Yeah, of course. I don’t relate anymore to the person I was at that time. I was really in Michael’s world–I went into his head, and into his land, and it took me years to get out of it. It’s quite a web you got into. Being the small young bug that I was.

[…]

When you think of your father, what do you think of?

That he could do no wrong in my eyes. He was a larger-than-life figure to me, someone I admired in everyway. I was daddy’s girl.

There’s a saying that the true test of a human is his ability to handle power. I think it’s true. You could give a perfectly fine person a lot of power and watch him struggle with it and try to figure it out. He was in a situation that would never be easy for anyone, and he didn’t understand why it was all happening to him.

People in that situation destroy themselves, because they don’t know what to do with the admiration. Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin–they overdo it, over-indulge, because there’s nothing else to compensate. I understand all that.

LMP, Dish – 2003


MARRIAGES, REBELLION, ETC

I had a good feeling when I woke up

But I missed it ’cause I was sleeping

Did you know I broke up my family

Oh the guilt it’s really killing me

-Excuse Me

When asked how Danny feels about her, she says, “He finds me very entertaining, oddly enough. I’m his entertainment, I guess.”

Tad Pierson has a theory about why Lisa Marie ever left Danny. The jist of it is- “She divorced Danny over the Presley name-she thought Michael Jackson could handle it.” Whether that theory is true or not, she does say, “I made the mistake of saying I was not happy in my marriage-and the courting started. And I left probably quicker than I would have, and that was probably one of the biggest mistakes of my whole life.”

Larry King suggested that, “one of the attractions to someone like Jackson is that Jackson had been somewhat of a Presley. I mean, a pinnacle of attention and focus.” Priscilla expressed, “Concern. Concern. I think – I think any mother would be concerned. You know, obviously, if my daughter’s happy, you know, then I don’t have any problem. But she’s very strong-willed.”

Says Lisa Marie, “You know, I’m sure it’s connected in some way to the grandness and the bigness of an earlier loss in my life. Some sort of representation of this grand, powerful… thing in my life that went away. That’s what he was to me as a child-this huge, electrifyingly powerful, grand, beautiful presence. It’s like a lost duckling, walking around looking for that.”

So how did Michael Jackson enter the picture in the first place? According to Lisa Marie,in Rolling Stone, he attempted to meet her when she was 18, but she was unwilling at the time because she thought he was a “freak”. But years later, when they finally did meet, they slowly bonded, through phone calls, flowers, candlelight dinners, “I just want to say he’s not stupid, he didn’t get where he was because he’s stupid. It’s unfortunate that not a lot of people know who he really is. He doesn’t let anybody see it. And he has some idea about how he should represent himself in the public, that he thinks works for him, which is the sort-of meek victim, meek-quiet thing that he does, which is not like how he really is. So, he doesn’t let a lot of people see that. When he wants to lock into you, or intrigue you, or capture you, or, you know, whatever he wants to do with you, he can do it. He is very capable of doing that. He was very quick to, the first time I met him, sit me down and go, ‘listen, I’m not gay, I know you think this and I know you think that. And he started cursing, and he started being a real person. And I thought ‘wow’.

So I get caught up in that. I’m pulled in right away. I’m like, ‘wow, you’ve so misunderstood’. Oh my God, you’ve this guy. I fell into this whole you-poor-sweet-misunderstood thing, I’m going to save you. I fell into his act. I fell in love with him. I did.”

Apparently, the marriage, which had a romantic and sexual beginning, rapidly deteriorated. He disappeared for weeks at a time, “There would be periods of time where I had no idea where he was- only by the press,” she has said, and even worse, used her to prove he was a man who loved a women, perhaps to protect himself from pending child-abuse charges, or to save his reputation.

Lisa Marie ended it, but suffered depression and severe ill health for some time afterward. In spite of it all, she has spoken with Jackson recently by phone, to offer her support, in the light of the widely watched Bashir documentary.

“I told you, see now, I’m not attracted to mediocrity or normalcy or things like that. I think certain things are attractive. I’m weird. I don’t know. I’m wacked,” she has said.

“You know what it is?” she told Diane Sawyer. “It’s that I get attracted to artists. I’m attracted to artists. I like when someone is shaking it up, when they’re different. I don’t know why, and I’ll never know why. But it’s just what I get attracted to.”

[…]

She is also a loyal member of the Church of Scientology, about which there is always so much speculation.

“Church isn’t going to tell me what to do with my relationships or my life. That’s not what they’ve there for. In fact, I walked in there, I don’t know, two months ago and said; You haven’t seen me in four months, now look what happens. I just got a divorce again. They haven’t seen me, so here we go. They put me back together. Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall, and then there they are with the glue,” she has said.

LMP, The Commercial Appeal, 16 January, 2003


Schilling says Lisa Marie, 34, shied away from a career in music for years, one reason being the perception of living up to her father’s legendary legacy. Nevertheless, Lisa Marie had several offers on the table in the early ’90s, including a production deal at one label that Schilling says he snagged without using her name “to make sure that what I was hearing was good.”

“We were closing a deal at Epic Records and we had a firm offer from RCA,” continues Schilling. “And she called me and said, ‘I can’t sign the deal.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ I thought she was kidding. She said, ‘Jerry, I just can’t do it, and you’ll know why.’

“And a couple of days later she married Michael Jackson.”

Lisa Marie married Jackson in 1994. They divorced less than two years later in 1996.

LMP, From Boston Globe 6 February, 2003


While on Siegel’s show, Presley said she felt sorry about her former husband Michael Jackson ‘s troubles but added that they’ve had no contact since their divorce and noted that she wishes he would ”get help.”

Harmon’s Radio GaGa, Feb.9, 2003


Lisa Marie Presley lost her virginity to STAR 94, kinda. Lisa Marie woke up this morning on the Steve and Vikki morning show on star 94 to debut her new CD “To Whom it may concern”. As we opened up the interview coming out of her new song, she remarked this was the first time she had ever heard herself sing on the radio,and it was her first time doing a radio show. She was a little nervous, but answered everything we asked including questions about the King of Pop (she said “it was dark a lot in their rooms”) to Nick Cage,w ho she realized just wanted to collect her as ELVIS memorabilia. She said she regrets the haze of the Michael Jackson interview years.

“It was a real marriage, believe it or not. Michael is a different person to the public image they have,” replied the new singer, however, said he did not recall whether there was a romantic proposal before the wedding.

LMP, USA Today – March 28th, 2003


When the offspring of rock royalty married the self-anointed King of Pop in 1994, eyebrows jumped. Michael Jackson wed Presley amid the media circus triggered by child-molestation allegations in 1993, prompting observers to declare the match an effort at image rehabilitation. They split 19 months later. Presley insists the marriage was “real” for her but sees fishy signs in hindsight.

“It was funny timing,” she allows. “I was blindsided. He’s very smart, and it’s not often that he lets someone into his world. I genuinely did love him. I wouldn’t have been involved for a weird reason, especially to cover up something.”

Ending years of no communication, Presley called Jackson to express support after a documentary earlier this year rekindled pedophilia suspicions. She stops short of echoing the “wacko” judgments, saying only, “He’s very different now. I can’t keep up with what’s going on. It’s not my mess to clean up anymore. I walked away a long time ago.”

LMP, New York Times – March 30th, 2003


A bewildering 20-month marriage to Michael Jackson in the 90′s – epitomized by the couple’s cringingly awkward televised kiss at an MTV awards show, and Ms. Presley’s memorable suggestion in a “Primetime Live” interview that anyone who harbored questions about their relationship could “Eat it!” – solidified a perception of her as a brassy, unpredictable flake.

[…]

But the radio hosts Ms. Presley spoke to often seemed more interested in asking her about Mr. Jackson, whose appearance on ABC’s “20/20″ in a documentary by the British journalist Martin Bashir had recently triggered a fresh round of controversy about his obsessive interest in children, his plastic surgeries and his all-around weirdness. She took the inquiries in stride.

“I walked away from that a long time ago,” she said of her marriage to Mr. Jackson, whom she divorced in 1996. “I was still relatively young, and trying to decide what would be better for me: being with someone who doesn’t have anything, and then they get trampled and have no ego because they just become `Mr. Presley,’ or being with someone whose situation is comparable to mine.” Before Mr. Jackson, Ms. Presley was married to the musician Danny Keough for six years; they had two children together and remain close friends.

“I was hoping that we’d be more equal,” she continued about Mr. Jackson. “I was in love with him at the time – and he doesn’t always act the way he did in that interview. I did feel bad about that – the director followed him around for eight months and edited it down to two hours. You can manipulate it any way you want. I mean, somebody could do that to me. But I’m sure I had the same reaction everybody else did when they saw it: it was a train wreck. I don’t have to clean up that mess.

“Then I read about all this voodoo stuff,” she went on, alluding to a recent Vanity Fair article that claimed Mr. Jackson had paid someone to cast spells on people he thought of as his enemies. “I thought, `What the hell’s going on now?’ I can’t even follow it, it’s so crazy. I have no sympathy for that.”

[…]

Wary of producing work that would only subject her to withering criticism, Ms. Presley sought – including in her relationships, most notably her marriage to Mr. Jackson – a collaborator who could help her sharpen her musical vision.

[…]

“That’s part of the problem with my love life,” she continued. “I’m looking for someone similar to him, and nobody could ever compare. He was so extraordinary a presence – not even as an entertainer, just as a person.

Roger Friedman, March 31, 2003


I’d like to say Lisa Marie Presley should have her head examined. But she can’t, since she doesn’t believe in psychiatry. I mean, she really doesn’t believe in it.

On her album, which will be released next Tuesday, Presley even sings the whole title track about this. The song, “To Whom It May Concern,” is a screed about psychotropic drugs being bad for kids. (“When there’s something wrong take an antidepressant. You can even choose which kind you want by the latest suicide.”)

Nice, huh?

Of course, this is the position of the Church of Scientology, of which Presley is an adherent: They are anti-psychiatry and anti-medication. They would rather be the cure for what ails you.

You’d think Rolling Stone, which has Lisa Marie on its new cover and has promoted the heck out of this fact, would have asked Presley about some of this in the story. In fact, the writer of the 8,000-word piece glosses over it, as well as the fact Presley’s Web site promotes a charity called the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights, or CCHR. The initials make it seem like Creedence Clearwater Revival, or Contemporary Hits Radio.

In fact, this is Scientology. There are 23 registered non-profit chapters of CCHR, and their purpose, besides lobbying and promoting Scientology, seems to be to raise money for the group. On their tax filings, CCHR chapters spend lavish amounts on promotion and press, paying consultants far more than the charity’s local directors.

I had to laugh, too. In the Rolling Stone piece, there are not one but two references to Beck — his album is playing in the background during the interview, and later Presley is at his house until the wee hours of the morning. Beck is a well-publicized Scientologist, who proselytizes the “religion” with zeal.

Writer Chris Heath could have asked Lisa Marie if she only listens to Scientologists or goes to their parties based on this information. After all, that’s why some people think it’s a cult.

Presley does break with Scientology philosophy, which says we shouldn’t blame others for our mistakes. To get publicity for her album, she turns on Michael Jackson and blames him for their highly publicized bad marriage. She even sends Heath lyrics to a song not on the album that imply Jackson is “masturbative.” (There’s a word you won’t find in any other pop song.) The song, “Disciple,” is not even on the album. But Rolling Stone’s press release about their article would make you think it’s there.

Yet Presley manages to use Jackson throughout the article in order to promote herself. She also takes a swipe at her most recent ex, Nicolas Cage, in the song “Gone”: “Turned out to be a coward. When I turned my back, you cut my throat it bled for hours. Was that your power…You with the advisors in your ear. You did everything right it’s clear. I know I begged you to stay around. But I’m gone now. Well, here’s to you my darling leave. You’re stubborn and you’re free and of course, right. I don’t respect the way you leave. You can be no friend to me.”

Presley says in the article this will probably be her only album, and she will most likely go back to being a recluse. It may not be such a bad idea.

As for Rolling Stone, well, I don’t know why I expected more. They’ve taken their whole journalistic legacy and flushed it away, it seems. All that good reporting down the drain.

LMP, Primetime – April 3rd, 2003


Diane Sawyer: Though nothing Lisa Marie Presley would ever do to her mum would equal this. Okay? Michael Jackson?

Lisa Marie Presley: Oh, God.

Diane Sawyer: Michael Jackson!

Lisa Marie Presley: I thought you were going to go here first. I was hoping you’d forgot.

Diane Sawyer: Why did you marry Michael Jackson?

Lisa Marie Presley: Okay, can I just, well …

Diane Sawyer: What were you doing?

Lisa Marie Presley: Um, let me, let me now … I’ve been trying to go through this. I haven’t thought much about this, what I was going to say and I just figured it would fly out of my mouth. Okay, first of all, he was very quick to … the first time I met him, sit me down and go, “Listen, I’m not gay. I know you think this, I know you think that”, and he started cursing and started, you know, being a normal person. And I was like, “Wow!” So I get caught up in that I’m pulled in right away. Like, “Wow, you’re so misunderstood. Oh my God, you’re this guy.” I fell into this whole, “You poor, sweet misunderstood thing, I’m going to save you.” I fell into that. I fell in love with him, I did.

Diane Sawyer: In love?

Lisa Marie Presley: Yes, I fell in love at the time. Now …

Diane Sawyer: Sexual attraction?

Lisa Marie Presley: I told you everything I said was the truth.

Diane Sawyer: Sexual attraction?

Lisa Marie Presley: At the time. Yeah.

Diane Sawyer: What did your mother say?

Lisa Marie Presley: She called me and said, you know, “Oh Lisa, there’s helicopters outside the house and they’re saying you married Michael Jackson”, and I go … I was just quiet and she goes, “You didn’t?” She goes, “You didn’t?” And I go, “Yeah, I did” and then it was just, you know, that was that was game on for me. Whoo! Mum doesn’t like it, let’s go!

Diane Sawyer: She didn’t you know you were going to get married?

Lisa Marie Presley: No, no that was quick, that was like run away and do this quick thing.

Diane Sawyer: And you did live together?

Lisa Marie Presley: Yeah.

Diane Sawyer: I didn’t believe that.

Lisa Marie Presley: Well, let’s just put it this way, if he was in town, he was at my house.

Diane Sawyer: Which was how often?

Lisa Marie Presley: I don’t know. It started to get less and less towards the end.

Diane Sawyer: Again, you can slug me on this question but I’ve got to go back. So these were, like, romantic nights?

Lisa Marie Presley: Mmm, mmm, yeah. I don’t remember them very well, but yes. I mean, it was normal. I wasn’t going to get married if it wasn’t that.

Diane Sawyer: By the time Lisa Marie Presley married Michael Jackson, Jackson reportedly had been treated for addiction to painkillers. He was also under siege. He had been investigated for child molestation with a 12-year-old boy. Jackson settled a civil suit with the family reportedly for millions of dollars and his camp implied he was the victim of extortion.

Lisa Marie Presley: I was already friends with him, there was already some romantic stuff going on a little bit before that happened. So it was like, I was already like, you know, I was the only one he would be calling so I felt all privileged and, you know, that he was trusting me and telling me what happened and it was very convincing and I believed him, at the time.

Diane Sawyer: But she says her mother looked at the timing of the marriage and tried to make her see something else.

Lisa Marie Presley: That’s what my mum was trying to point out like “Hello, are you awake? Can you see this might be co-ordinating or coinciding with something else?” And I didn’t see that, like, I was young. I don’t know. I mean, it looked a little suspicious but at the same time I know that he loved me, you know, as much as he can love someone, I think he did.

Diane Sawyer: What do you mean as much as he can love someone?

Lisa Marie Presley: I just mean, you know, as much as he can be capable of doing that. It’s not something he’s used to doing is having relationships with women, you know? He’s sort of been a one-man show his whole life.

Diane Sawyer: How did it end? What happened?

Lisa Marie Presley: It just kind of went really sour, really fast.

Diane Sawyer: But you filed for divorce from Michael?

Lisa Marie Presley: Yes.

Diane Sawyer: And how did you tell him that was it?

Lisa Marie Presley: It was when he was, you know, it was over the phone. I’d had enough. There was a lot of stuff going on then. It got really ugly at the end. It wasn’t pretty but I don’t want to get into it.

Diane Sawyer: Did he fight you getting a divorce?

Lisa Marie Presley: No, he … I think he got on to, you know, getting somebody else pregnant, right? Or having a baby. That’s what he wanted. He seemed to get on that pretty quick. You know, I don’t know.

Diane Sawyer: Did it shake your confidence?

Lisa Marie Presley: Yeah, I was pretty much needed to be mopped up off the floor after that one.

Diane Sawyer: And then 108 days of nuptial nitroglycerine with actor Nicolas Cage … a relationship so tempestuous she reportedly threw her $65,000 engagement ring into the ocean. You were really in love?

Lisa Marie Presley: With which one?

Diane Sawyer: With Nic Cage?

Lisa Marie Presley: Yeah, I was.

[…]

Diane Sawyer: Why do you marry them when it’s like this?

Lisa Marie Presley: You know what it is? It’s I get attracted to artists. I’m attracted to artists. I like it when someone’s shaking it up, when they’re different. I don’t know why, I’ll never know why but it’s just what I get attracted to.

Diane Sawyer: Anyone out there who says “she’s loony” …

Lisa Marie Presley: Yeah.

Diane Sawyer: I mean, how do you explain to them?

Lisa Marie Presley: I’ll say it loud and say it proud, I’m completely insane.

Diane Sawyer: Have you figured out why?

Lisa Marie Presley: Um, God … no. No, I think when I figure out why I might stop and that might be boring.

[…]

Diane Sawyer: Five years from now, imagine a perfect day for me.

Lisa Marie Presley: It doesn’t take much for me to be a perfect day. So long as there’s not divorce involved in it, I’m fine.

Lisa Marie, MSN Chat, April 4, 2003


dandystuff in Onstage_1 asks: Do you hate Michael Jackson?

Lisa_Marie_Presley says: No I do not hate Michael Jackson. The opposite of love is not hate it’s indifferent. I’m indifferent.

LMP, VH1, April 4th, 2003


Presley first leapt into the limelight in 1994 by marrying Michael “King of Pop” Jackson. Many dismissed the union as a ploy to divert attention away from the superstar’s child abuse charges and towards Lisa Marie’s nascent singing career. It didn’t work. The sloppy kiss seen around the world on the MTV VMAs couldn’t deter those pesky “irreconcilable differences.”

[…]

There’s more, too. “Nobody Noticed It” slams the hangers-on and handlers who won’t let her father lie, “Disciple” does much the same for Wacko Jacko’s entourage, and the ballad “Gone” may or may not be raking Cage over the coals.

[…]

VH1: John Travolta, who is also a Scientologist, recently said you’re like a surrogate daughter to him. Do you feel that way?

Presley: Yeah. We kind of went into that [relationship] straight away. He gets protective. I think after the Michael episode he got very protective. He was concerned about who I was going to date next! He’s a sweetheart. He’s such a teddybear, that man, I swear to god. So genuine and so sweet.

LMP, LA Times – April 6th, 2003


Presley knows that every story written about her — even her obituary — will probably include the names Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson. So the daughter of rock’s greatest star is out to claim a piece of that obituary for herself. After years of being intimidated by the legacy of her father, she is hoping to have a recording career — and her goal is to prove that there is more to her than her birthright and ex-marriage partners.

“I’m not doing this to be a pop star,” says Presley, pausing to reflect the week before the performance. “I’ve had plenty of money and attention. I’m doing it for credibility.”

It’s only natural to scoff at such a lofty ambition, especially given the oddball turns in her private life (marrying Michael Jackson — hello!) and the image many probably have of her as a pampered rich girl. But the 5-foot-2 Memphis native is serious and disarmingly open during a break at the studio.

[…]

“I had no reason to do interviews before,” she says a week before the dress rehearsal. “The only thing I could talk about was my fame or my parents. Why the hell would I go out and do that?”

Though her mood is much lighter than at the public rehearsal, Presley is shy and reserved. She smiles nervously when introduced, and she tends to avoid eye contact. So it’s surprising when she eventually proves strong-willed and disarmingly open about her personal life. It’s as if she wants people to know her rather than her image, so she has to open up in her music and in interviews.

Nothing contributed more to her tabloid fodder than the 1994 marriage to Jackson, and no question is asked more than “Why?”

Even in trying to be candid, she finds it hard to settle on an answer, though in Rolling Stone, for instance, she talks enough about Jackson alone to fill a page. She felt sorry for him, especially after the child-abuse accusations came out, and was protective. And, yes, she said, they had sex. But she also points out that things got “ugly” at the end — that he would sometimes disappear for weeks at a time.

In the rehearsal studio, it’s clear that she regards the marriage as a horrible mistake.

She says her first husband, musician Danny Keough, is still a close friend. But that’s not the case with Jackson.

What about the recent documentaries on Jackson? Does she feel sorry for all the public ridicule?

“I did see the British program, and it does look like he was set up,” she responds. “But, no, I could never feel sorry for Michael Jackson.”

Trials of love

One senses that Lisa Marie’s highly publicized romantic trials have had much to do with the weight of being a Presley.

The young mother of two was devastated by the breakup of her marriage to Keough, which she clearly does blame on the Presley pressures.

“Even if you have talent, which Danny does, you immediately becomes Mr. Presley in the world’s eyes, and it eventually tore the marriage apart,” she says.

She pauses and looks around the room at the empty stage.

“That has been a constant problem for me,” she says, pursuing the thought. “If I’m going with a musician, they become Mr. Presley and they get squashed and they get resentful and we end up going after each other. After Danny, I thought maybe I should be with someone who is famous. I married Michael.”

LMP, Newsweek – April 7th, 2003


You’ve been in plenty of surreal situations by now, like being married to Michael Jackson. You must have known that it was going to be a circus.

I was naive on that front. I was in this constant struggle that went something like this: a man who’s with me who has nothing is gonna be stomped on and have no identity left by the time [the press] get done with him. He’ll be Mr. F–kin’ Presley. I thought, I need to be with someone bigger than I am – or at least comparable – so they don’t get trampled. Michael wanted to meet me earlier in my life, and I said, “No way.” I thought he was a freak, and I had no interest in meeting him. But when I finally did, he immediately dashed any preconceived idea I had about him. We had a perfectly normal conversation, and I completely forgot who he was within 20 minutes. I actually did fall in love with him, but I don’t know what was on his menu.

You married Michael at 26. You seemed miffed that people didn’t believe the marriage was real. Now can you understand why everyone thought it was weird?

Absolutely! But at the time I was like, “What the f–k is the problem? Why am I getting all this bad press? They think I married him because I want to be a singer or I want publicity? All I ever did prior to the marriage was stay the hell away from that!” It took me a while to realize that maybe he manipulated stories or did things for public reasons, and that I was getting dragged into it. I can see that now.

Do you think he was truly invested in the marriage? [Jackson married Presley only months after he was accused of child molestation.]

I can’t say what his intentions were with me, but I can say it was the most real thing I think he’s had. My mother was like, “Timing – hello! Wakey, wakey!” But I rebelled against my mom, of course, and tried really hard not to think like that, not to believe that.

Was it a mutual decision to break it off?

No, it wasn’t mutual. He was in the hospital, and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. I started asking questions, and it was always a different story. He said I was “causing trouble” and “stirring up problems.” He told me, “you’re making my heart rate go up,” and asked me to go home, and I said, “Good. I want out.” This person is one of the biggest entertainers out there. He is not stupid. He’s very charming when he wants to be, and when you go into his world you step into this whole other realm. I could tell you all about the craziness – all these things that were odd, different, evil or not cool – but it still took me two and a half years to get my head out of it.

You say you were naive, but you seem tough and savvy in person.

Well, when it comes to love I’m naive. I’m a noodle. I go haywire. I’m getting better at it, though. I’m getting faster at coming to the conclusion that something’s not right.

What went wrong with you and Nicolas Cage?

With people like me and Nic, it’s difficult because there’s the camps. You’ve got 15 people around. That’s something that contributed – same with Michael. They may be claiming to love you or seemingly happy you’ve together, but any minute they can throw a wrench in, they do. They’re so dependent on that person that you may be raining on their parade.

LMP, Chicago Sun Times – April 8th, 2003


In the cover story of the current Rolling Stone, Presley patiently deals with all of the gossip: her bout with drugs (it was short, she was young and it’s over); her marriage to Michael Jackson (also short, also over and something she now describes as a result of being manipulated by Jackson’s charming ways); her third marriage, to actor Nicolas Cage (another failure–it was true love, but they just couldn’t live together), and her religion (Scientology is not a cult, she maintains, but something that helps her center herself).

[…]

Q. Now you have to deal with the selling part of the process, which I gather you don’t enjoy.

A. That’s where I’m having some trouble! [Laughs.] It’s hard for me, and then I have to deal with all the other stuff [the gossip], which I’m very happy you’re not asking about right now. But I’m sure you will.

Q. Oh, hell no. I want to talk about music.

A. Wow, thanks! The thing is, I’ve been doing these interviews, and I’m just hearing about my dad, Nic or Michael.

[…]

Presley doesn’t hold much back in her lyrics, railing against men who can’t hold their own in a relationship with a strong woman (several tunes seem to be directed at ex-husbands Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage) and the way that a prying media can trivialize genuine emotion. (The first single, “Lights Out,” is a poignant evocation of her father’s ghost, inspired by her recollections of the mood at Graceland the day he died.)

LMP on Howard Stern, April 8th, 2003


R: The thing with Lisa Marie is that she left her husband to go off with Michael Jackson.

H: That I don’t get. Let’s get into this.

L: K.

H: Alright.

L: *clears throat*

H: Yeah, clear your throat.

L: Here we go.

H: Alright.

L: Do You want it? Next time?

H: No, no, don’t hawk any loogies on me. You meet Michael Jackson. Now, where do you meet a guy like this?

L: I met him at a friend’s house – at the time, a mutual friend that we both knew.

H: Who’s the friend, Elizabeth Taylor? Or one of the…

L: No.

H: Uri Geller?

L: This guy was an artist.

H: Rabbi Shmuley Boteach?

L: Maybe…

H: Who’s this, an artist guy?

L: Yeah. A painter.

H: A painter?

L: Mmmm.

H: And he had a friendship with Michael Jackson?

L: Mm-hm.

H: I’ve sat with this guy – he has nothing to say.

L: Which guy?

H: Michael Jackson.

L: You did?

H: Sure.

L: Oh, this is that thing in your book when you said he wanted you to…

H: He wanted me to parade through the streets, rally here, the guy’s insane! I sized him up in two seconds. Before you get married again, you let me meet the guy.

L: OK.

H: So you meet this guy and he’s charming?

L: Yes. This was before all that garbage happened.

H: With the boys.

L: Yeah.

H: Yeah… so you meet up with him, he’s a good guy… and what does he do – he take you out on dates?

L: No, it was just more like a… we talked for a while. I forgot who he was after about 20 minutes, just ’cause he was so real with me.

H: You thought he was hot?

L: No, I didn’t think of him like that at all. But then um, I dunno, we started talking on the phone.

H: He starts calling you?

L: I started calling him, he started calling me, I sort of became his friend.

H: That’s what I would do with you.

R: Now, when does Michael actually make a sexual move?

L: [to Howard] You’re actually very sweet.

H: Thank you. You are too.

L: Thank you.

R: But let’s get back to this. When does Michael make a sexual move?

L: Um… I don’t wanna get into anything sexual…

H: I’ll get into it.

L: I’m not answering sexual!

H: [to Robin] You went too fast, you went too fast. Let me butter her up. Let me work on her.

L: No, you can talk to me about MY sex, whatever, but not like… you’re gonna try to get like, genitals and sex out of… with other people, no.

H: Fair enough. Did he make you wear a strap on?

L: Yes. No!

H: That’s what I thought. Alright. Now wait a second… so you meet the guy and he’s talking to you and stuff, and you think you’re falling in love with him.

L: Mmm…

H: Coz you like his conversation, you like his rap.

L: Mmmm.

H: But aren’t you just… ’cause when I sat with him, I was really disturbed by the nose and all the plastic surgery, I mean, it really… but I’m a guy, I don’t know.

R: And the make up!

H: At any point did you see him without the make up?

L: Um… what make up? I mean, powder, I don’t know…

H: You know what I mean, the tape over the nose, and the…

L: Yes, um…

H: And was it freaking you out?

L: I didn’t look at him like that, I was kind of beyond that, I know that sounds whatever but I just, you know.

H: So you’re going out with the dude, but it’s all private on the phone, then you probably go over to that Neverland ranch…

L: Yeah.

H: …hanging out there, because you can’t go out and be seen together…

L: Right.

H: …you gotta keep things quiet… and you go over there, and does the guy like, what does he do – does he make you dinner? How does a date go?

L: Um, it was just… I dunno, we used to hang out at his house, things like that.

H: What would you do for fun? Watch movies?

L: He’s got quite a spread there, you know?

H: Yeah. Did you go on those rides and stuff?

L: Yeah.

R: And play video games?

H: But you’re a full bodied sexual woman, I ain’t gonna sit there and play rides with you. The only ride I’m taking is you. Is he like a real perfect gentleman, a little too nice, or did he make some moves on you?

L: No, he was… whenever he was ready, it happened.

H: How long did that take?

L: I wasn’t the instigator, I wouldn’t, you know, I um… that wasn’t something I could imagine at the time.

H: So he moves in and starts kissing you, you don’t resist?

L: *laughs* Obviously not!

H: You liked it. Did he tongue you?

L: Huh?

H: Did he give you the tongue?

L: Will you stop it?

H: Yes.

L: Thank you. I married the… MF. Well, I can’t say it, right?

H: Did he spank you?

L: No.

[…]

R: but can you even tell us, alright, Were you sexually satisfied by Michael Jackson?

L: Um… you know, I… see…

H: The answer’s either yes or no.

L: Well, the answer would be would I have married someone that I wasn’t.

[…]

H: Alright, so you’re with Michael Jackson and uh… you start to realise things are going horribly bad.

L: Mm-hm.

R: Wait a minute, who asked – he asked you to marry him? He wanted to get married?

L: Mmm.

H: Do you think it was a publicity stunt for him?

L: I don’t know. I think you should ask him.

H: What do you think?

L: I don’t know.

H: You think he used you?

L: Mmm… you know, sketchy.

H: Sketchy?

L: Mmm. Timing-wise.

R: But the whole, you know, MTV kiss?

L: That wasn’t my idea. I was… yeah.

H: So all these men are using you? Michael used you, and we’re not even sure about Nicolas Cage, I mean that was such a short marriage.

L: Nic didn’t use me.

[…]

H: Ever had a black guy?

L: *laughs*

R: Michael Jackson!

H: Oh that’s right.

[…]

H: You’re not gonna tell me about Michael Jackson’s penis, why it was so special?

L: I’m not.

H: There’s something on it though that that kid said he… should explain it, what is the… just give me the…

L: Something on it?!

H: Just come here, listen to me.

L: Come here?

H: Yeah come over here and if you don’t answer this I’m going to have to spank you. What is it that’s different about Michael Jackson’s penis that distinguishes it? Just answer that please.

L: I’m not answering any questions about anybody’s…

H: …penis?

L: Penis, right, I know.

H: Is it a vagina and not a penis, is that the mind blowing secret down there?

L: …

H: I’ll wait for your answer.

L: I’m not answering!

H: I can wait you out. I need to know. Tell me during the commerical.

L: I’m not… I’m not, I’m not!

H: Wink yes if there’s something weird down there. … Ah, thank you.

L: No I didn’t, I didn’t wink! I blinked.

General:

Lisa Marie said that Jackson would give her all kinds of gifts and stuff when she was with him. She said she knew things weren’t right when he did an interview with Diane Sawyer.

She said she wasn’t drinking then either, that came after the marriage.

Howard asked her who she spoke to when she wanted to get away from Jackson. She said she talked to her mother and her mother just listened to what she had to say. Lisa said she and Jackson divorced but they had signed a pre-nuptial agreement so it wasn’t a major thing.

Lisa Marie, David Letterman Show, Wednesday, April 9, 2003. Show #1967


What can she tell us about Michael Jackson?

“Ahhhhhhh! Wow!”

She seems to have a lot to say but isn’t saying much.

Dave wants to know what happened to him, if anything HAS happened to him? Something is obviously wrong. “Were there signs when you were married that he was odd?”

Lisa simply says, “I left.”

I guess there was something oddly wrong.

Comments on Lisa Marie’s using Michael to spearhead her music career, Roger Friedman, 10th April 2005


Lisa Marie Presley has been receiving much press attention lately, mainly in regards to her past marriage to Michael Jackson.

The Diane Sawyer interview seemed to be solely based on the marriage, well – in the medias eye anyway. No article’s after the interview had anything to do with her album, that’s for sure. Lisa Marie seems to be building a pre-success through every statement and interview she makes regarding Michael – headlines are made, articles are written, but what is all of this really for?

The obvious answer to that question would be for the publicity, to promote her new album – no, thats not the why says Lisa. So why then? Why speak about Michael at every available opportunity? Why let peoples imaginations run wild with every dissecting and word-playing statement she makes?

Lisa shares similarities with Fox News `journalist’, Roger Friedman. When Michael Jackson’s name is brought up, their facial expressions show certain ridiculousness on Michael’s part. Lisa has `revealed’ that Michael has everyone fooled. “He knows exactly what he’s doing … that little victimy thing that he does.” Lisa’s words play with our imaginations about what Michael is `really’ like.

Here is the full impression that I get from Lisa about Michael Jackson: Michael Jackson is an extremely manipulative person who uses people as puppets in a media success war. Sorry Lisa, I’m not buying it.

Maybe at the bottom of her album cover will be a little message saying, “I was married to Michael Jackson.” – that should sell a few more albums. Would Lisa be anywhere if she weren’t ever married to Michael? Is it really a coincidence that the daughter of Elvis Presley is able to release an album? One thing’s for sure, Lisa certainly didn’t start from the bottom.

Maybe people should think about this – Lisa’s words seem incredibly different to those of former ex-wife, Debbie Rowe. But then again, Michael and Debbie did split up on better terms.

Lisa’s success, really, should come directly from her talent, her music, her performance and her personality – just as Michael’s does. Lisa is giving out a manipulative image; she manipulates the true personality of Michael Jackson to a media world, which are ready to eat it up, all just to publicise herself. The fact is, Lisa Marie and her new album has nothing to do with Michael Jackson in anyway. Is it really a coincidence that she is telling us all about her marriage to Michael now that she is promoting her new album? Now that she is trying to break into the music industry? Maybe, but not likely, and not plausible.

We wish Lisa the best of luck, just as Michael does – she’ll need it, as soon as her story dies down, so will her success. Now, if her fame and success were built upon talent and hard work, then there’ll be nothing to worry about – but Michael Jackson is still in the picture, if he weren’t, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten as far as she has, or will get.

LMP, The Hamilton Spectator – April 15th, 2003


But in interviews with Rolling Stone, Diane Sawyer, Howard Stern and others, she found herself defending and explaining brief and bizarre marriages to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage.

She claimed she fell in love with Michael Jackson because she fell for his story about being a victim of publicity and that was before allegations surfaced about child abuse.

[…]

With the celebrity marriages (to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage) some would say you were asking for it.

You know what? That’s not the case. Here’s the deal: I was with 14 men in my life — like relationships. Two of them were celebrities. Two out of 14 ain’t bad. The other ones do exist, they are living, breathing human beings and nobody gives a crap about them.

Do they feel unloved with all of the attention through all this?

I know one. I don’t speak to the other kind of post-Danny (Keough, her first husband with whom she continues to have a close relationship). Prior to that, I don’t know any of them anymore.

I wasn’t trying to go out with celebrities. But one of the things I did try to figure out was “Should I go out with someone who is one or who isn’t (a celebrity)?”

They both have their drawbacks. With me being strong, being a woman, being the one who has all the celebrity, the interest, the power, the this, the that — it’s not easy for a man to be in a position like this, especially if he is talented on his own.

He gets kind of smothered or they get pummelled and they turn into Mr. Presley and they get this whole stigma on them and I hate that. And so I go to the other extreme and that’s what you see happening and not anything else.