Fans of Elvis Presley – and his famous family – get a raw glimpse into 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 unveiled the memoir as her latest book club selection on “CBS Mornings” on Tuesday. The book untangles Lisa Marie’s complicated life, including stories about growing up in Graceland, grieving the death of her father Elvis, and navigating motherhood.
“When I read the book, it feels like a tragedy. But I think it’s really important for me to remember that there was so much joy and love and wonderful 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 one time – I want to say it was on one of his tours, in Tahoe. He always took the entire top floor of any hotel for him and the entourage. That evening he was back in his bedroom, very angry, cursing and shouting. Someone told me to sit behind a chair in the main suite and not move. Everyone tried to hide behind something, to stay out of the way. So I hid and watched as he took things by the handful, by the armful, and threw them off the balcony. He had found his flight path and was going to fly it until he was done throwing stuff off that balcony.
Eventually he calmed down and someone said to me, “It’s okay, you can come out now, he wants to see you.”
I thought: does he want to see me?
I said, “Why was he so angry?”
“Well,” someone said, “he was out of water.”
So I grabbed four bottles of water and walked into his room.
“Someone told me you had no water,” I said, and he just motioned for me to come and hug him.
But he was respectful: he wasn’t rude to people, he wasn’t an angry person, he didn’t live there. Some people live in complete devastation, others buy property and walk around angry for a while. My father would just come to visit.
Sometimes my dad would take me to an amusement park in Memphis called Libertyland and he would close it to me and the whole entourage and their families and friends. He and I rode the roller coasters. I loved it.
One of my father’s anger visits came one time when we were going to Libertyland. I had invited all my friends, but when I went up the night before, I heard the wrong kind of tone: this baritone sound, the wrong kind of intensity. I went to my room and heard loud crashing noises. He screamed his damn head off at someone. I heard him say we weren’t going to Libertyland the next day. I was devastated.
I found out later that he had lost something again, and that he had to get it before we went – either that, or they wouldn’t give it to him. So he went up to the roof and called about ten different doctors and nurses until he found someone who would give him a solution. Once the nurse or doctor administered what he needed, he was fine. And we went to Libertyland.
I remember sitting next to him on the roller coaster that day – the Zippin Pippin – with one eye in front of me during the ride, and the other on his holstered gun, which was on my side. Unless you knew him or understood him, that sounds terrible, I know. You might think he was crazy, wearing a piece with his daughter sitting next to him, but he was just from the South. It was just really funny.
So we drove and drove.
That was about a week before he died.
Presentation
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, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
