Fans of Elvis Presley – and his famous family – take a closer look at their lives in a posthumous memoir titled From Here to the Great Unknown, co-written by Lisa Marie Presley and her daughter Riley Keough.
Oprah Winfrey She revealed the memoir as her latest book club pick on “CBS Mornings” on Tuesday. The book reveals Lisa Marie’s complex life, including stories about growing up in Graceland, her grief over the death of her father, Elvis, and her motherhood.
“Reading the book feels like a tragedy. But I think it’s really important for me to remember that there was a lot of joy and love and great times in our lives,” Keough said during an interview on “CBS Mornings.”
Read an excerpt from the memoir From Here to the Great Unknown, on sale now.
There was this time – I want to say it was during one of his walks in Tahoe. He always occupied the entire top floor of whatever hotel he was in, for himself and the entourage. That night he returned to his bedroom, very angry, cursing and screaming. Someone told me to sit in a chair in the master suite and not move. Everyone was trying to hide behind something, get out of the damn way. So I hid and watched him take things by the handful, by the handful, and throw them off the balcony. He found his flight path and was going to fly it until he finished throwing things off that balcony.
Eventually, he calmed down, and one of them said to me: “It’s okay, you can go out now, he wants to see you.”
I thought he wanted to see me?
I said: Why was he so crazy?
“Well, we’re out of water,” said one of them.
So, I took four bottles of water and entered his room.
I said, “Someone told me you don’t have water,” and motioned for me to come and hug him.
However, he was respectful, he wasn’t rude to people, he wasn’t an angry person, and he didn’t live there. Some people live in ruins, others buy some property and wander around in anger for a little while. My father will just visit.
Sometimes my father would take me to an amusement park in Memphis called Liberty Land, which he would close down for me and all the entourage and their families and friends. He and I were riding on roller coasters. I loved it.
One of my father’s angry visits came one time when we were supposed to go to Libertyland. I had invited all my friends, but when I went upstairs the night before, I could hear the wrong kind of notes—this baritone voice, the wrong kind of shrillness. I went to my room and heard loud crashing noises. He was screaming his damn head off at someone. I heard him say we weren’t going to Libertyland the next day. I was devastated.
I later found out he was out of something again and needed to get it before we went – either that or they wouldn’t give it to him. So, he hit the roof and called about ten different doctors and nurses until he found someone to treat him. Once the nurse or doctor gave everything he needed, he was fine. And we went to Liberty Land.
I remember sitting next to him that day on the roller coaster – the Zippin Pippin – keeping one eye in front of him during the ride, and the other on his gun in his holster, which was next to me. Unless you know or understand it, this sounds terrible, I know. You might think he was crazy, holding a piece with his daughter sitting next to him, but he was just from the South. It was really funny.
So we rode and rode.
This was about a week before his death.
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From the book: From Here to the Great Unknown by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough. Copyright © 2024 by Riley Keough. Published by Random House, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.