Going it alone

Broken relationships fall on a continuum from friendly to toxic.

Priscilla Presley’s divorce seems to have been entirely amicable. According to her enjoyable new memoir Softly, As I Leave You, her “Life After Elvis” did not sever myriad affectionate connections with the King of Rock and Roll.

Now 80, Presley first met Elvis when he was 24 and she was 14. She wrote about the early, apparently chaste relationship and eventual marriage in 1986’s Elvis and Me. That book is hardly mentioned in her new memoir, co-written with Mary Jane Ross, except when she discusses Sofia Coppola’s film version, 2023’s Priscilla.

Marriage stresses included Elvis’ reign over Graceland, his entourage, rumours (and evidence) of affairs when he was on tour or shooting films and his explosive temper — although she insists that “he rarely exploded at me.”

She got pregnant with daughter Lisa Marie Presley not long after their marriage in 1967. Elvis was worried about the effect of a wife and child on his career, even asking Presley if she wanted to abort the pregnancy. She refused, but felt torn between her roles. “I began to feel like I was living two lives, one tending to my daughter and the other keeping my husband happy,” she recalls.

The pregnancy also scuttled her plans to travel with Elvis on tour. “Making everything worse was the fact that Elvis lost interest in me sexually after Lisa was born,” the author writes.

After spending half her life with Elvis, the pair divorced in 1973. Softly, As I Leave You chronicles the author’s increasing confidence in her independence, her involvement in fashion and other businesses as well as her embrace of Scientology, which acted as a sort of therapy for her and for Lisa Marie Presley, growing up as the daughter of the King, who would die in August 1977.

Chapters with titles alluding to songs by Elvis and others meander through phases of the author’s life, not exclusively chronologically. This can aid character development, but also confuse contexts.

Suspicious Minds, the chapter detailing her relationship with Michael Edwards in the late 1970s and her difficulties with her daughter’s adolescent struggles for independence, is as tightly plotted and dramatic as any short story.

Co-author Ross has collaborated on books with Ray Charles’s son, Frank Sinatra’s friend Tony Oppedisano and Mafia hit man Albert Demeo.

While Priscilla Presley turned down a role on Charlie’s Angels, major acting jobs she did take included as Jenna on Dallas and as Frank Drebin’s love interest Jane in the Naked Gun films. She tells affectionate stories about the Dallas cast, especially Larry Hagman, and about Leslie Nielsen. She witnesses Naked Gun co-star O.J. Simpson’s controlling temper towards then-wife Nicole Brown Simpson. (She does not mention her role as Jane Spencer-Drebin opposite Liam Neeson in the recent reboot of The Naked Gun.)

Besides her own businesses, Presley managed Elvis’ estate after his death, until their daughter turned 25.

Much of the book involves Presley’s fraught relationship with her daughter through many ups and downs, including music, drugs and marriages to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage.

Through it all, Priscilla Presley remained her daughter’s staunch protector and advocate. They bonded while celebrating Baz Luhrman’s 2022 biopic Elvis and Austin Butler’s portrayal of their main point of connection — it was a bright spot shortly before Lisa Marie Presley’s tragic death in early 2023.

Priscilla Presley’s other emotional rollercoasters, such as her experiences with her son Navarone and her grandchildren, can tend toward dismal. In light of Elvis’ death, she notes the irony of her family’s experiences with drugs and her own activism.

Ultimately, the author’s ability to find silver linings and honour life even in the face of death add to this memoir’s poignance and enjoyment.

She ultimately succeeds in finding her own life before, as she writes, “I could figure out how Elvis fit into it.”

Bill Rambo is a retired teacher in Landmark and a devoted fan of both action and conversation about music history.