Some kids remember summer camp. Riley Keough remembers going on the road with her mom’s band.
Riley is Lisa Marie Presley’s daughter, which makes her Elvis’s granddaughter. In 2024 she finished her mom’s memoir, “From Here to the Great Unknown,” working from tapes Lisa Marie had recorded.
That October she sat down with Tonya Mosley on NPR’s “Fresh Air” to talk about the book. And in the middle of that conversation, she shared a sweet memory about life on the road.
Lisa Marie put out her first album, “To Whom It May Concern,” in 2003. Her first single, “Lights Out,” came out on Feb. 10 that year. When she went out to sing those songs live, she didn’t leave her kids at home.
“She loved being on tour,” Riley told NPR. “We had, like, the best time ever. We all went on tour together.” She and her brother went along, she said, and “My dad played bass.”
Her brother is Benjamin Keough, and her dad is musician Danny Keough. So the band had a family feel to it, with Mom up front singing and Dad holding down the bass.
Riley got a sneak preview of the music, too. “She’d always play us her demos in the car and blast it really loud,” she said. As a little girl, she’d even tell her mom which versions she didn’t like.
This fan upload, labeled as a 2005 live performance, catches Lisa Marie singing the title song from that first album, so you can see the singer Riley grew up watching from the wings.
Lisa Marie singing “To Whom It May Concern” live
Being Elvis’s daughter on stage came with something no other singer had to think about.
In the memoir, Lisa Marie wrote that it was disorienting to look out into the audience and see Elvis impersonators. Mosley brought it up, and Riley told her what her mom used to do about it.
Before the show, Lisa Marie would go to the side of the curtain and quietly scan the crowd. She was looking for Elvises.
“Well, she used to, before shows, like, peek out the side of the curtain and find where they would be so that she wasn’t surprised when she went out there,” Riley said. “And she would just peek around and kind of go, OK, there’s one in the back. There’s one over there, like, so she wasn’t shocked.”
That way, once she walked out and started singing, an Elvis lookalike in the crowd wouldn’t catch her off guard.
Riley was quick to say the fans meant well. “I think that they were just fans,” she said.
Lisa Marie kept performing for years. This fan video from Memphis, filmed on Sept. 21, 2013, shows her on stage singing “Lights Out,” her very first single.
Lisa Marie performing “Lights Out” in Memphis
Riley has talked about her mom’s feelings toward the spotlight in other interviews too. In this Access Hollywood clip, she opens up about how Lisa Marie felt about being famous.
Riley talks about her mom and fame
Still, when Riley looks back on the touring years, the picture she paints is a happy one. The whole family went along, and she was close enough to watch her mom get ready.
When NPR asked about her mom, Riley called her “one of the most loving people I’ve ever met.”