On May 26, 1994, Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley They got married in a secret wedding. The union must have been the most powerful in the music industry: she, the daughter of the King of Rock, Elvis Presley; and he, himself King of Pop. The idea was pure perfection, but in practice, there were quite a few doubts.
They announced the news via press release. No one, outside the most intimate circle of the couple, knew. Lisa was 25 years old and was previously married to Danny Keough, father of her two oldest children. For his part, Michael had received his first accusation of child abuse, so everything smelled strange and yet, they kept saying that they were in love.
How did you meet?
They had both met in 1974, when she was six years old and he was 16, after a Jackson 5 concert. She was just a spoiled child, her mother, Priscillasaid: “he had everything that a child should not have or could appreciate.” He lived through an adolescence of drug and alcohol abuse, and in 1993 she met Michael again at a dinner at a friend’s house. in common in Los Angeles. The connection through music brought them together. According to the host, when saying goodbye to the young woman, the singer whispered to her: “You and I could get into a lot of trouble. Think about it, little one.”
They began a relationship via eternal telephone conversations where they talked about their unconventional childhoods, homes like Graceland and Neverland, the media and distrust of strangers because most sought to take advantage of them.
Lisa believed that no one understood her like Jackson. He was a funny man, who used rude words and did not speak with the high-pitched voice that everyone knows: “I was never a woman who followed the norm, I like strange guys, those who live on the edge, those who have fire inside them. That, to me, was Michael,” he stated.
Michael not only had a child abuse charge, but also an addiction to painkillers since he burned his scalp filming a Pepsi commercial. Lisa had recovered from her own addiction and set out to save Michael.
The intense sexual life they said they had
According to both, there was a strong sexual attraction. “I have no idea what they were doing to her, or what he was doing to her, considering Lisa has a penchant for the unconventional, but “I was crazy about that boy.”said a friend of Lisa’s in J. Randy Taraborrelli’s biography of Jackson.
“He liked her to wear her jewelry to bed.”. They played at being others, although Lisa never said what kind of characters they played.” Michael never let her see him without makeup, and for Elvis’ daughter that was fun.
According to Lisa, their sexual encounters were wild and intense, that Michael once unleashed was difficult to stop. He also described him as a great kisser and had a predilection for one position: he liked to do it standing up. And repeat. Furthermore, he always had to be dressed.
The secret marriage
Although she was still married, Michael proposed to her and she said yes. The wedding took place in the Dominican Republic, for fifteen minutes and in Spanish – they needed a translator –, with both dressed in black and only the witnesses present. Lisa had divorced her ex 20 days earlier.
“The ceremony was not a good thing. “It felt empty, like everything else in my world.” Michael would declare. Priscilla Presley never trusted her son-in-law, “Don’t you understand that he is using you?” He told Lisa who was outraged and they did not speak for a while.
The first time they showed themselves as a married couple was in the MTV Awards from 1994. It is said that they fought backstage, she did not want them to kiss, he insisted.
Although he considered Lisa’s children as his own, problems arose when he began to insist that he wanted to be a father, but she was not convinced. “When I imagined having a child with him, all I could see was a Dantesque custody battle”he declared years later.
Fidelity to the grave
The passion they showed in the video clip of “You are not alone”, where both appear naked, faded away. They spent months apart in 1995, and in January 1996 Lisa filed for divorce. Received ten percent of the profits from the HIStory album (which Michael recorded while they were together); and he never spoke ill of his ex-husband, not even when the artist was found dead in 2009, at the age of 50.
“It was an ending predicted by him, by those who loved him and by me. But what I couldn’t predict was how much it was going to hurt when it happened,” Presley explained when her ex died.
Lisa promised to reveal unknown details about Jackson – whom she always defended – and from his father, in a book that he would have been writing before he died, on January 12, 2023, at age 54. Both confessed at some point that once separated, they remained in contact. “There are probably only five or six people, not including kids, who have seen who he really is,” Presley said of the King of Pop, and she was one of those people.
