Lisa Marie finding her own voice

By Nekesa Mumbi Moody
Associated Press

NEW YORK — In a small studio space filled with music industry executives, critics and a smattering of celebrities, Lisa Marie Presley steps onto the stage, and before she sings a note, gives the audience a nervous glance, as if she can sense the doubters in the crowd.

Lisa Marie Presley's musical career has been decades in the making. Advertiser library photo

"There are people who are ready to just blow me away before I even get out the gate," Presley states matter-of-factly. Her first album, "To Whom it May Concern," was released this month.

Not only must she live up to the legacy of her father — arguably rock's most revered icon — she also has to live down the notoriety of her brief and bizarre marriages to Jackson and Cage.

"That tabloid image has had a life of its own for 30, 35 years," she said.

"People's general ideas of me are that. Whether it's my marriage, this or that, or Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson," said Presley, dressed in jeans and a baggy sweat shirt, blond highlights in her auburn hair.

"I understand that curiosity, I want to answer the questions, but at the same time I'm trying to do something here, so it's kind of me trying to find my way right now."

"To Whom it May Concern" may help her carve out her own identity. The disc, which deals with her troubled relationships, has garnered favorable reviews from critics.

Grammy-winning producer David Foster, a friend for a decade, describes her as someone "with a lot to say, and you listen to the lyrics ... they're moving, they're evocative, they make you think."

While the album took four years to make — an eternity by today's industry standards — Presley's musical career has been decades in the making.

She began singing at age 3, and as a teen learned to play the guitar and drums. But her mother, Priscilla Presley, was not encouraging.

"She was like, 'You have some big shoes to fill,' " Presley recalls her mother saying about her father, who died when she was 9. "She was worried about me taking this path."

So Presley, whose striking resemblance to Elvis is almost eerie, put her music on hold. She married musician Danny Keough when she was 20 and had two children by the time she was 24.

"I needed to ground myself and build a foundation before I went out trying to do all these things," said Presley, whose teenage years were marked by drug abuse. "I was trying to make my life stable — which, you know, I didn't do — but as far as the kids go and stuff like that, that foundation was built."

Still, music was never far from her mind. She began writing songs with Keough, and later made a demo, a cover of Aretha Franklin's "Baby I Love You." But when she got close to being signed by a record label, Presley backed out.

"I wasn't emotionally ready to take that on," she said.

A few years later, at 26, she made what may have been one of the most nerve-racking decisions of her life. She left Keough and leapt into marriage with Jackson.

In recent interviews, she has suggested that Jackson may have used her to boost his image, and described him as manipulative. She has said she didn't know if he was "technically psychotic" during their marriage.

Yet Presley "doesn't regret any of it." Jackson's own fame, in part, made her feel comfortable with him. (They first met in Las Vegas, where The Jackson Five performed. She was 7, he was 17.)

"I was very happy being next to someone that was even more ... high-profile than I was," she said. "... Anytime I was in a relationship before that, I was always the one, and it was smothering to someone."

Presley was later engaged to rock musician John Oszajca and married less than four months to Oscar-winning Cage.

She said she stopped pursuing music to focus on her marriage to Jackson and didn't start writing again — "as a cathartic thing" — until after the relationship had faltered.

But she didn't consider music as a career, Presley said, until Foster sat her down and told her to get serious.