In her new memoir, Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis, Priscilla Presley unleashes a series of revelations about her life after seperating from her husband.
As well as revealing more depth to her relationship with Elvis Presley and then Robert Kardashian, the book shares her true feelings about her once son in law, Michael Jackson. In her own words she labelled Jackson as “manipulative” and questioned his motives for marrying her daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, as revealed by Rolling Stone.
The book, released today, picks up where her 1985 memoir Elvis and Me left off, chronicling her life after leaving the King of Rock and Roll in 1972. But it’s her assessment of Jackson that has captured attention, with Presley stating her belief that Jackson married Lisa Marie purely for publicity during his child molestation allegations.
“I knew in my bones that Michael wasn’t marrying Lisa Marie; he was marrying the Presley dynasty. The King of Pop was allying himself with the King of Rock & Roll. I didn’t believe he loved her,” Priscilla writes. She describes Jackon as having “his sights set on her long before she realized it”, hinting the relationship was calculated rather than genuine.
Presley also revealed she opposed Jackson’s intention to have a child with her daughter after Lisa Marie confessed they were considering parenthood. Presley suspected Jackson’s motives were less about love and more about creating “proof of virility” and potentially having “Elvis’s grandchild”. Reportedly, Lisa Marie told her mother, “Michael says that if I don’t want to have a baby, Debbie Rowe will have one with him.”
Lisa Marie eventually filed for divorce from Jackson in January 1996, less than two years after their wedding. Lisa Marie had begun to see what her mother had already suspected, and that “if he’d wanted to be with her, he wouldn’t have been gone for most of their marriage.”
The book also details other intimate moments from Priscilla’s post-Elvis life, including her relationship with Robert Kardashian in 1975. She recalls a particularly tense moment when Elvis called at 2am whilst she was in bed with Kardashian, forcing her to take the call privately to avoid sparking Elvis’s jealousy. “Elvis always carried a loaded gun, sometimes more than one,” she wrote.
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