By Evan Garcia and Jonathan Allen
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (Reuters) – Hundreds of mourners gathered at Graceland on Sunday morning to pay their respects to singer Lisa Marie Presley in a memorial service at the mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, she inherited from her father, rock legend Elvis Presley.
Presley died on Jan. 12 at the age of 54. Earlier that day, she had been rushed to a Los Angeles-area hospital after reportedly suffering cardiac arrest at her home.
“Our heart is broken, Lisa, and we all love you,” her mother, Priscilla Presley, said at the service on the front lawn of Graceland. “Lisa Marie Presley was an icon, a role model, a superhero to many people all over the world.”
Singers Alanis Morissette, Billy Corgan and Axl Rose performed.
Lisa Marie Presley is survived by her daughters, actress Riley Keough and 14-year-old twins Finley and Harper Lockwood.
Two days before her death, she had appeared with her mother, Priscilla Presley, at the Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California, where actor Austin Butler won the best actor award for portraying her father in the film “Elvis.” Butler paid tribute to both women in his acceptance speech.
Presley began her music career in the 2000s with two albums, “To Whom It May Concern” and “Now What,” that made the top 10 of the Billboard 200 album chart.
She was married and divorced four times, including to pop star Michael Jackson and actor Nicholas Cage.
She was the only child of one of the greatest stars in American music, and was 9 years old when Elvis Presley died of heart failure at age 42 in 1977 at Graceland. The mansion is now a popular tourist attraction.
Elvis Presley and other members of his family are buried at Graceland’s Meditation Garden.
Lisa Marie Presley was buried there before the memorial service alongside the grave of her son, Benjamin Keough, who died in 2020 at age 27, a death ruled a suicide by the Los Angeles County coroner. In a recent essay, she had described herself as “destroyed” by her son’s death.
After the memorial service, friends, family and members of the public formed a procession past Lisa Marie Presley’s grave.
“Lisa was the last very, very close piece of Elvis that was left to us and it’s so sad that she is not here with us on this Earth any more,” said Kimberly Starbuck, a 59-year-old retired baker from Memphis.
(This story has been corrected to fix the attribution of a quote in the last paragraph)
(Reporting by Evan Garcia in Memphis and Jonathan Allen in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Chizu Nomiyama)
By: OAN
