Oprah Winfrey selects
Fans of Elvis Presley — and his famous family — are getting a raw look 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 revealed the memoir as her newest book club selection on “CBS Mornings” on Tuesday. The book untangles the complicated life of Lisa Marie, including stories about growing up in Graceland, grieving the death of her father Elvis and navigating motherhood.
“Reading the book, it does feel like a tragedy. But I think that it’s really important for me to remember that there was so much joy and love and just 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,” which is on sale now.
There was this one time—I want to say it was during one of his tours, in Tahoe. He would always take the whole top floor of whatever hotel he was in, for him and the entourage. That night he was back in his bedroom, really, really angry, cursing and screaming. Somebody told me to get behind a chair in the main suite and not move. Everyone was trying to hide behind something, to stay out of the fucking 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 he 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, He wants to see me?
I said, “Why was he so mad?”
“Well,” someone said, “he ran out of water.”
So, I grabbed four bottles of water and I walked into his room.
“Somebody told me you didn’t have any water,” I said, and he just motioned for me to come give him a hug.
He was respectful, though—he wasn’t rude to people, he wasn’t an angry person, he didn’t live there. Some people full-on live in destruction, others buy some real estate and walk around in anger for a little while. My dad would just visit.
Sometimes my dad would take me to an amusement park in Memphis called Libertyland, and he would close it down for me and all the entourage and their families and friends. He and I would ride on the roller coasters. I loved it.
One of my dad’s visits to anger 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 tone—this baritone sound, the wrong kind of intensity. I went to my room and could hear loud crashing sounds. He was yelling his fucking head off at somebody. I could hear him saying that we weren’t going to Libertyland the next day. I was devastated.
I found out later that he had run out of something again, and he 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 who would give him a fix. Once the nurse or doctor had administered whatever it was 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—keeping one eye ahead on the ride, and the other on his gun in his holster, which was on my side. Unless you knew or understood him, that sounds terrible, I know. You might think he was crazy, carrying a piece with his daughter sitting next to him, but he was just from the South. It was just really funny.
So we rode and rode.
That was about a week before he died.
Handout
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.