As you can see from the title, and assuming you live under a rock with no access to any news outlet whatsoever, Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of Elvis Presley, died on January 12 this year, 2023.

In an amazing coincidence that always seems to be pinned upon such event, she passed away on the 50th anniversary of a rehearsal performance that her father gave at what was then known as the Honolulu International Center Arena, ready for a concert the following night that would be beamed around the world via satellite,. to an audience upwards of one and a half billion people, a figure that still holds the record today as the biggest audience for a live television broadcast by a solo performer (i.e., not counting Live Aid or similar events).

In a further twist of irony, she passed away in the same week that she made two very rare public appearances – one at her ancestral home in Memphis, Tennessee, hereinafter referred to as ‘Graceland,’ and the second at Hollywood’s Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles, California, two days later. A further two days after that, she was found unresponsive at her California home. Just as happened with her father, her family are being somewhat cagey about the cause of death, which usually means only one thing – drugs.

When she appeared at Graceland on January 8, it was to celebrate what would have been her father’s 88th birthday. Unbelievably, perhaps, but yet another acknowledgement of Elvis Presley’s cultural impact on the world, hundreds, if not thousands, of people turned up in the cold weather to watch Lisa Marie cut a huge cake and make a very short speech in which she stated clearly that meeting her father’s fans was almost the only thing that could get her out of the house these days.

On July 12, 2020, Lisa’s only son, Benjamin Storm Keough, died by suicide at a party given at his mother’s home in Calabasas, California. The motive for it has never been revealed, except to say that he did suffer from depression, and had been involved in some sort of an argument with his girlfriend immediately prior to the suicide. After the argument, he simply walked into his bathroom and blew his brains out, calm as you like.

Why he decided to do it at that moment has always been unclear, but the motive doesn’t matter; his mother, Lisa Marie, was devastated. It broke her heart. Now, despite the fact that they never met in life, Ben is now buried at Graceland, in the Meditation Garden, alongside Elvis, Elvis’ parents Gladys and Vernon, Elvis’ grandmother (Ben’s great-great grandmother), and a monument for Elvis’ twin brother Jesse Garon, who died at birth.

So, when Lisa Marie joked on January 8 that meeting the fans was the only reason she went out of the house, well, she wasn’t joking.

And, in yet another ironic twist, it turns out that Lisa Marie visited the graves at the Meditation Garden, and remarked to a fan that a place had been set aside for her own grave, which was the subject of Lisa’s first single in 2003, ‘Lights Out.’ “I hope that’s a long way off,” remarked the fan. “Yes, I hope so, too,” replied Lisa, “I’ve still got so much to do.” Of course, no-one could know that she was about to begin eternal rest there in less than two weeks’ time.

Still, at the event itself, while Lisa’s appearance did cause concern for some, and her movements were definitely slower and more measured than usual, she did manage to spend a lot of time signing autographs and posing for selfies with dozens of fans. One thing I noticed from the video on YouTube was that she had developed a hacking cough. More of that later.

Two days later, Lisa Marie had returned to Los Angeles, and appeared at the Golden Globe awards. Begun in 1948, these awards are often seen as a poor cousin to the Academy Awards®, which typically occur around February/March of each year. Both of you will know that Lisa and her mother, Priscilla, oversaw the making of Baz Luhrmann‘s latest epic, Elvis. The actor playing Elvis Presley in the film was Austin Butler, and he was nominated for the Best Actor award. And, guess what? He only went and won it.

Butler made a speech, and in it he thanked and expressed his undying love for both Elvis’ former wife and his only child. This brought tears to Lisa Marie’s eyes and, for the first time since the death of her son, she mingled afterward among the other actors and filmmakers, and allowed herself to be interviewed a number of times. For much of the time, however, she was leaning on the arm of an eighty-year-old man, Elvis’ former bodyguard, Jerry Schilling. During an interview before the awards, she turned to Schilling (live on camera), and said, “I’m gonna grab your arm.” She looked absolutely ghastly.

Now we shall be going into the realms of speculation here: if Lisa knew she was dying, I cannot imagine why she would have gone to the Golden Globes. I don’t think for one moment she believed her life was about to end. Two days after the Awards ceremony, she was found unresponsive in her bedroom, and by the time paramedics arrived, her former husband Danny Keough was there, administering CPR. It seems from what I understand that she was most likely already brain dead, but they did manage to restart her heart for a short period of time, but she kept having further cardiac arrests, and Priscilla signed a “Do Not Resuscitate” order.

There are three and a half possibilities as to the cause of death: first, and the half a possibility, is that she did simply die a natural death, albeit at the relatively young age of 54. This leads us to the second possibility, which is that she was genetically predisposed to die young from a heart attack or a cardiac arrest. Her grandmother, Gladys Presley, died at 46 – an angry, violent alcoholic who suffered a heart attack in hospital while she was being treated for liver damage. Then of course there is Elvis Himselvis, whose death at 42 has always been attributed to a heart attack by the family…which leads me further into the third possibility, which is that drugs or drug addiction was wholly or partly to blame.

Many, many writers have detailed the sordid nature of Elvis’ addiction to prescription medication, an addiction that (allegedly) began while he was serving in the US Army in Germany in 1959. In Lisa’s case, it turns out that she became addicted to Vicodin after the birth of her twins (another genetic predisposition in her family) Harper and Finley in 2009. The doctor that gave her Vicodin unsupervised ought to be struck off for giving a highly addictive painkiller to someone with her drug history, and the inclination towards addiction within her family. I mean, it’s just crazy.

Once you become addicted to that drug, it’s a slippery slope. Oxycodone, Fentanyl, and others. Who knows what she was on. It would go some way toward explaining her ghastly appearance at the Golden Globes, and her unsteady gait and slurring of words, while the eighty-year-old man who was holding her up was in the picture of health.

My final possibility is a deliberate ending of life, in other words, suicide. Lisa, like her father, suffered from an incredibly deep depression. Indeed, I might extend my theory and say quite plainly that Lisa, like her father, was bipolar. Just because she said she had so much to do two days earlier, it does not mean that the dark clouds had not descended once again. When she inherited her father’s estate in 1993, it was said to be worth more than $100 million. But she spent all that, and a whole lot more, in the last thirty years of her life and was about to be declared bankrupt. At the time of her death, she was spending upwards of $90,000 on rent alone. Per month!

Bipolar sufferers tend to have enormous highs in between the shattering lows. during which time they spend an awful lot of money; and this will often lead to an inability to manage finances, but all of this is speculation. Hopefully, the family will see fit to reveal the truth in an effort to end speculation such as this, but it is of course their right to hold on to it if they wish.

The death of Elvis Presley’s only child was both a shock and completely predictable. Predictable because of the generational tendency toward illness and addiction; and, finally, a shock because I couldn’t believe that these awful things had not passed Lisa by, that they were still very much a part of the Presley makeup. As I said, there are several possible causes for her death, all of which could have been handed down to her genetically. We just have to hope that, wherever you go when you die, or perhaps go nowhere at all, her spirit will find some sort of peace. x

If anybody cares, Prince Harry’s book Spare will be published worldwide next Tuesday, 10 January. Unless, of course, you speak Spanish, in which case you can pick it up now in most book stores in Madrid or Barcelona.

In the years after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997, I had a lot of respect for the princes William and Harry, because – and this is despite the vast amount of privilege that they both enjoyed and continue to enjoy – they must have suffered an extraordinary amount.

The Guardian‘s procurement of an advance copy of the book has led to an absolute torrent of stories all across the many news outlets on the internet, and indeed hard-copy newspapers, for those that still buy them, all blaring out the most salacious, gossip-y bits that they know most people will be interested in.

Harry’s crumbling relationship with his brother, his father, his entire family, are laid bare for all to see. His book now makes public his boast about the number of Afghans he killed, and this has led to allegations of war crimes from the Taliban – and the book isn’t even out yet!

All of this leads to the most shocking allegation of all about Harry, and the rest of the royal family – that he, and they, are, well, quite normal, really. No-one seems to have committed any crimes, except maybe Harry, who’s also quite open about his drug use over the years.

What’s also quite ordinary is the fact that Harry has written this book for money – a lot of money. He has, to all intents and purposes, prostituted his and his family’s lives for money, and even as I type I can imagine that they will be absolutely fuming – and with some justification, I feel. Any respect I had for Prince Harry has now vanished, and while I can’t say I respect the royal family as an institution, as people they certainly would have the right to tell him to pick up his stuff and clear off.

The book has now ruined, I would say, any chance of a reconciliation with William and King Charles. I wonder if Harry would have gone ahead with its publication had Queen Elizabeth II still been alive? In my humble opinion, Harry ought to forfeit any small claims he has to the British throne, his father is already on dangerous ground given the fact that he is the first divorcee to ascent the throne and become head of the Church of England (not that I agree with the C of E’s stance on that, by the way).

I’m really not going to repeat any of the book’s allegations, just go to almost any news site on the internet if you really want to know, but I’m just going to leave it at that, really. For Harry, there is no turning back now. Probably until the death of the Queen in September, there was still a chance to pull the plug, but after that, once hundreds of thousands of copies were being rolled off the printing presses of the world, it was and is too late.

Harry’s motives (other than money) for spilling the muck on everyone in his family are being picked apart across the internet, so I’m not going to bother doing that here. But it is clear that this book is some sort of a cry for help; he can be sure, however, that that help is not going to come from his family.

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