Lisa Marie Presley was the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, and she grew up inside Graceland, the big white-columned house her father bought in Memphis, Tennessee. By the time she could barely talk, she was already a little performer. She just didn’t know she had company.
Years later, as a grown woman, Lisa Marie went back to Graceland for a 2013 interview and let herself remember being tiny there. Walking those rooms again brought it all back. One memory in particular made her light up. She was about 3 years old, and she had found what she thought was the perfect private stage.
Plenty of kids do this. They grab whatever is handy, pretend it’s a microphone, and sing to no one. Lisa Marie just happened to be doing it in a house where the man of the family knew a thing or two about the stage.
She didn’t remember the song. She didn’t need to. What stayed with her was the room, and the feeling of being completely lost in the moment.
Before she told the rest, it helps to see her walk those same halls. In this clip she tours Graceland and talks about what it was like to be a kid in that house.
Lisa Marie walks through Graceland and remembers growing up there
So here is what she was up to. She had wandered into her dad’s upstairs closet, where a big three-way mirror stood. She grabbed a hairbrush, held it like a microphone, and started belting away at her own reflection. “I don’t remember what I was singing, but it was upstairs in his room,” she said. She was “just going at it, and my hairbrush, singing away in the mirror.”
She was sure she was alone. She wasn’t.
Elvis was standing out in the hallway the whole time, watching his daughter through the gap in the door. He “was in the hallway looking through the door in the crack,” she remembered. One of the most famous entertainers who ever lived, quietly peeking at his little girl putting on a show for no one. Her audience was a single person, and it was her dad.
That was the kind of house Graceland was. Lisa Marie also remembered a red light that would switch on whenever her father was recording music at home. “There’s a red light that would go on when he was [recording],” she said, and the second it lit up, everyone knew to go quiet.
Lisa Marie grew up to make music of her own, releasing her first album in 2003. She passed away in 2023, but little stories like this one keep her and her dad close to the fans who still love the family.
In this short clip from the same interview series, she talks about why she chose a life in music.
Lisa Marie on why she followed music
The mirror story is just one of the memories she shared that day. Watch her full Graceland tour above and hear her tell it the way only she could.