Songwriting therapy from the bruised soul of Lisa Marie Presley

“A great day is spending time with my kids doing nothing.” Conducted in the wake of what turned out to be Lisa Marie Presley’s final album, an unseen interview is finally surfacing. In 2012 I got on the phone with a still-weary but upbeat Presley, ensconced in a Nashville hotel the afternoon after playing a professionally filmed gig inside the historic Exit/In. Soon she would be on her way to Ohio for another concert on the second leg of the Storm & Grace tour supporting her critically acclaimed, but commercially underwhelming record produced by T Bone Burnett.

The interview had been in the works since July and nearly materialized face to face while Presley was in Memphis acknowledging the 35th anniversary of her record-shattering father Elvis Presley’s death. Gatekeeper Roger Widynowski of XIX Entertainment kept close tabs on the conversation, limiting it to 10 minutes [Presley obligingly allowed twice as much time] and establishing three parameters — discuss Storm & Grace, the tour, and her unfeigned “I Love You Because” virtual duet with Elvis.

Your humble scribe opted for a lyrical plunge through “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” and three more of the best cuts anchoring the LP. Presley’s twin daughters with fourth husband and bandleader Michael Lockwood, Harper and Finley, endearingly chatted in the background. Dissatisfaction with my interrogation and razor-sharp nerve flashbacks pushed the story aside, occasionally remembered when inquisitive people asked for the names of my well-known celebrity encounters.

Perfect days became harder for Presley to wake up to in the decade after our conversation. An all-out war with ex-Lockwood over the custody of their children, financial mismanagement, substance abuse, media scrutiny, and grieving the suicide of second child Ben culminated in her death at age 54 from a small bowel obstruction that precipitated cardiac arrest on Jan. 12, the day after Yardbird Jeff Beck and the same week she attended both Elvis’ Birthday Celebration and the Golden Globes where Austin Butler accepted a deserved Best Actor statuette for metamorphosing into Elvis.

If Presley had reconnected with her songwriting muse, recorded new material, and returned to the road, would we be mourning her loss? Too many what-if’s to ponder. As our interview confirms, Presley was guarded but always sincere in her convictions. The 39 compositions the snarly, alto singer authored across 2003’s To Whom It May Concern, 2005's cleverly-titled Now What, and Storm & Grace demonstrate an artist who was emphatically not a pale facsimile of her hip-swiveling rock star dad.

The Lisa Marie Presley Interview

How are you doing?

I’m okay. I’m a little tired. We played the Exit/In here in Nashville last night [Nov. 5, 2012, which was officially filmed and can be seen at the end of this story] which was really fun. We have one day off. I’ve got two four-year-old’s so I have to run them around and get them out of the hotel. And I’m on the phone obviously [laughs], but it’s good.

I’m sorry to be a nuisance, but hopefully something of value will emerge as we survey your songwriting.

Oh no, you’re not bothering me.

When did you know that you wanted to be a lyricist?

I actually don’t know. I liked poetry and music even in school and did both. In my early twenties I started writing as kinda my own therapy.

Did you have a teacher who encouraged you to write?

No, I just liked creative writing.

What was one of the first things that you recall jotting down?

Too tough to answer, but I liked short stories and poems. I would always write how I was feeling, just naturally.

How did the concept of Storm & Grace take shape?

I actually went away to England and wrote about 30 songs. I came back to L.A., sold everything, and moved to the British countryside full-time [until 2016 when Presley filed for divorce from Michael Lockwood and put their 15th century manor in Rotherfield, East Sussex, up for sale]. My manager Simon Fuller played my demos for T Bone Burnett [the Americana producer has taken home 13 Grammy Awards so far and been the driving force behind the Counting Crows’ August and Everything After, the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ debut collaboration Raising Sand; Presley admired all three albums].

T Bone said he wanted to do a record. The process unfolded naturally over a two-year period and wasn’t planned [Burnett informed the L.A. Times that “Un-Break” was the Presley song that sealed the deal for his participation. “I was struck by how real Lisa was in some of the songs,” Burnett related to reporter Todd Martens. “It was sung in an incredibly unaffected way. I love when a singer sings like Sinatra, when it’s conversational. That’s the greatest challenge in singing, and she did that.” Presley added to Entertainment Weekly, “There was always a chair in the room with a guitar set up for T Bone. I could tell if he liked a song because he would come out and play”].

The deluxe edition of Storm & Grace houses 15 songs. What happened to the rest?

We narrowed it down to those 15 for the recording sessions, which took 12 days [January 2012 at the Village Studios in L.A.].

Let’s uncover the stories behind four of my favorite songs from Storm & Grace, starting with the jaunty, country blues of “Storm of Nails” [music by English indie pop artist Ed Harcourt, who also collaborated with Presley on “Over Me” and “Soften the Blows”]. You sure sink your teeth into the first line of the chorus, “On the forecast for today, a storm of nails is headed your way.”

I woke up and was scheduled to write with Ed. I don’t ever know what I’m gonna say or what’s gonna happen when I go to a writing session.

I was realizing that people surrounding you will make or break you. Things were happening in my life that weren’t normal. You know those days where you wake up and nothing goes right. Everything is difficult. Sometimes that happens in life, but then sometimes it happens a lot. At that point in my life it was happening a lot. People around you can also create problems. Everything was hitting all at once, and I just wanted to go back to bed and start again. Groundhog Day a little bit [laughs]. That’s how “Storm of Nails” came to me.

You co-wrote the acoustic ballad “Weary” with Sheffield-raised indie pop-rockabilly troubadour Richard Hawley [“How Do You Fly This Plane?,” “I Was Wrong,” “Just a Dream,” and the title cut also bear Hawley’s handiwork].

I was really processing a lot of things, and I was scheduled to write with Richard. I was overly emotional and wasn’t quite sure how I was gonna write. It was our first writing session, and we were both nervous. We hummed a melody, and then Richard left me in the room.

I felt like it was a song where I was saying things to someone that I needed to say. When Richard came back, he was like, “Where are these lyrics coming from?” [laughs]. We wrote it all out in about an hour and a half. “Weary” was an important song that I needed to write at that moment. It was also the beginning of the really stripped back and broken down sound of the whole album [“Richard is kinda like England’s Leonard Cohen or Johnny Cash,” Presley acknowledged to Entertainment Weekly. “I was tending to be more complicated, just this personal torture, and Richard broke me down into simplicity: ‘Why are you going all over the place? Just write!’”].

Was “Weary” the earliest song written for Storm & Grace?

“Close to the Edge” [music by James Bryan McCollum / Sacha Skarbek] and “So Long” were written before “Weary.”

Did Hawley request joining forces with you?

My husband [Michael Lockwood] loves the music that happens in England and knew Richard before I did. Michael is also a big fan of Pulp [Hawley supplied guitar on the alternative rock outfit’s tours for five years]. Michael is the one who had the idea of the collaboration. When I went to England, it was always, “Why don’t you get with this person and see what happens?” Like an experiment. I ended up having a good thing with Richard, Ed, and Sacha Skarbek [the songsmith guiding James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” and Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball”].

Biting rocker “So Long” [music by Luke Potashnick / Skarbek] — “churches, they don’t have a soul, soup for sale without a bowl, religion so corrupt and running lives” — takes no prisoners.

I wrote that awhile ago [in early 2009]. It’s pretty self-explanatory [laughs]. I write literally and metaphorically. It’s not always so literal like “So Long,” which definitely puts things into the perspective that they were in at that time in my life.

Considering the subject matter of “So Long,” are you a religious person?

Typically, in interviews I don’t talk about religion, politics, or ex-husbands. Those are the three no-no’s [laughs]. I just wanna promote the album and talk about the music. To be honest, when I write a song, it’s an open canvas for the listener afterwards. I like to create a scenery. When I’m done, I’m kinda done. Then it’s up for anyone else to have and interpret whatever they want out of it [a grief-stricken Priscilla Beaulieu joined the Church of Scientology in the wake of her Christian ex-husband’s shocking demise and coerced her daughter to become a member in hopes of curtailing her rebellious streak; by 2009 Lisa had severed ties with Scientology].

Lead A-side “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” [music by James Bryan McCollum / Skarbek] is akin to a coiled rattlesnake. Those notes you sustain on the chorus elicit chill bumps.

Oh, thank you. “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” is about me uncovering what was really going on. Something that I thought was well-intended was something else entirely. It would be like finding out what someone you thought really cared about you actually was saying about you behind your back. What the people that you trusted, like your mother, therapist, priest, or whatever truly thought about you and not in a very good way. You have to finally say, “Okay, fine. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s gonna be. Let’s just go with it and see what happens.”

We’ve all dealt with our share of fair-weather friends.

Fair-weather friends goes back to a lyric in “So Long.” That’s definitely been something that I’ve parted ways with. I realized there were way too many of those kinda people in my life.

Your dad was arguably the greatest, most influential music interpreter of the 20th century. Besides the obscure early ’60s B-sides “That’s Someone You Never Forget” and “You’ll Be Gone,” have you ever wondered why he preferred not to compose his own material?

I don’t know if it was so popular when he started in the ’50s to write your own songs. Sure, some of his contemporaries were songwriters [e.g. Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Roy Orbison]. Artists were on the hunt for a good song, whether it was theirs or not.

I write in an aesthetic. Sometimes it’s literal. Sometimes it’s metaphorical, even about my own life. It could be something I heard, something I saw, or something that a friend of mine was experiencing that I went through with them. For instance, I’m not literally talking about being in a cockpit in “How Do You Fly This Plane?” My lyrics are a little tricky to pin down, and I like it that way.

Do you have to be in a certain place to write?

I have to be seated [laughs]. I have to make my whole day about writing. Usually I go to the person I’m writing with’s place, whether it’s a garage, a little thing outside the back of their house, a tiny closet, or an actual studio.

What about writing when you’re on the road?

No. When I’m touring, I set aside time for that. When I’m writing, that’s my focus [Presley says, “Don’t go without me” to an impatient Finley and Harper, who endearingly ask their mom when will she be finished; as if on cue, Widynowski interrupts, “Hey Jeremy, we have like two more questions and we have to wrap this up”]. I’m sorry. I’m trying to handle my four-year-olds right now while I’m talking to you.

No apology necessary. Just tell the girls I said hello.

I will [laughs].

Since Nashville is T Bone’s home base, have you entertained the notion of recording a future album there?

Someone actually did bring me to Nashville before to record. I was okay with the idea, except it was a little bit too contrived for me. If it was a natural thing, I would do it. If it was something like, “Okay, let’s try to make you sound a certain way,” I don’t think I could do that. It has to come right outta my soul like Storm & Grace did. Nobody tried to make me do anything, and I work better that way. I was really fortunate to have my lyrics resonate with T Bone and him wanna be a part of the sessions [regrettably, Presley never distributed a fourth LP in her lifetime].

How were you introduced to Michael Lockwood?

Michael came on as my musical director after I decided to tour in support of my first record [To Whom It May Concern, 2003]. I met him while working.

Was it love at first sight?

Yes, I think so. I had a crush on Michael pretty immediately. I had an interest in him before he came to whip the band in shape. He was highly recommended. I knew who he’d worked with before, artists I admire like Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Carly Simon, and Susanna Hoffs. The minute I saw him I was intrigued — and a little nervous. I was with someone else, and he was dating someone else at the time [laughs].

If you’ll take one more last question, what is your perfect day?

Honestly, a day where I’m with my children and doing really simple things. Or! [Presley’s voice euphorically rises]. I fluctuate. A day where I’m gonna be working. I love touring [Presley’s last show occurred a year and a half later on April 10, 2014, at the Blue Note Club in Tokyo; subsequent dates were cancelled due to “chronic back pain”]. Right now, a great day is spending time with my kids doing nothing. Another perfect day would be when we go to sound check, everything is good, and we do a great show.

I was at Graceland when you and your mom were interviewed by former TCM Vice President Tom Brown for the “Conversations on Elvis: Behind the Stage” event during Elvis Week on Aug. 17, 2012. Once the segment was over, you walked a short distance to George Klein’s SiriusXM radio booth for an interview with your dad’s buddy going back to the eighth grade at Humes High School. A friend reported your whereabouts, and we scurried over to some barricades lining a makeshift pathway to the booth. For two hours you signed and posed for selfies. While you were autographing my notebook journal, I summoned a few words of appreciation. You looked me squarely in the eyes and replied, “Thank you.” Just a genuinely sincere moment that I won’t forget.

I really enjoy the contact and putting myself right in there [a decade later and four days before the end, Presley had not tired of the custom, spending time with fans following her brief remarks at the annual Elvis Birthday Proclamation Ceremony at Graceland].

It’s been enriching chatting with you this afternoon.

Thank you so much. Likewise.

© Jeremy Roberts, 2023. All rights reserved. The Lisa Marie Presley interview was edited for clarity, brevity, and sequenced cohesively. To touch base, email [email protected] and mention which story led you my way. I appreciate it sincerely.