Every parent knows the feeling. You snap at your child, and a few minutes later the guilt sets in. Elvis Presley was no different, and his daughter never forgot how he made it right.
Lisa Marie Presley was born on Feb. 1, 1968. She was the only child of Elvis and his wife, Priscilla Presley, and she adored her father. Her own daughter, actress Riley Keough, put it plainly when she spoke with NPR: “I think that she was so close with her father, like she was a daddy’s girl and he was everything to her”.
She was honest about his temper, too, and she made a joke of it in the 2005 book “Elvis by the Presleys.”
“His temper could give Darth Vader a run for his money. But if he was happy, everyone was happy. He’d never bore you.”
And the good days sounded wonderful. “If [Elvis] was in a good mood, it was going to be a great day. We’d ride horses or ride around in golf carts,” she said in the same book.
Years later, Lisa Marie started recording tapes about her life. Those recordings became her memoir, “From Here to the Great Unknown,” which came out in October 2024. Riley finished the book from her mother’s tapes.
Riley sat down on “Live with Kelly and Mark” to explain why her mom wanted to write the book with her, and it’s worth hearing before you read any of the stories inside.
Riley Keough on why her mom wanted to write the memoir with her
One of the sweetest memories in that book starts with a scolding.
It doesn’t matter what it was about. What matters is what Elvis did afterward, once he felt bad about it.
Lisa Marie remembered in her memoir that to make up for a scolding, Elvis sang “Can’t Help Falling in Love” to her through a basset hound puppet.
Think about that for a second. The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, using a dog puppet to sing his famous love song to one little girl, because he wanted her to know he was sorry.
The song wasn’t a random pick, either. “Can’t Help Falling in Love” already belonged to the two of them. In a 2012 interview with ABC News, Lisa Marie recalled her father singing it to her. He loved to sing to his daughter, and that tune meant something between them.
So when he needed to fix things, he reached for their song. Then he added a puppet, which is the part that makes it so very Elvis. Plenty of dads would say sorry and leave it there. He turned it into a little show for an audience of one.
For a girl whose father was everything to her, it’s easy to see why that moment stuck. It’s a peek at the father she knew at home, away from the stage and the screaming fans. If you grew up with a mom or dad who could turn a bad moment around with something silly, this one will probably feel familiar.