Now this was a strange one. Should I go or not? What would she do/say? What would it be like? In the end I decided the only way to find out was to purchase a ticket and go along and see the lady myself.
The press release for the UK tour told me: “Actress and businesswoman Priscilla Presley today announces her first UK Tour; ‘An Evening with Priscilla Presley.’ Priscilla is the former wife of Elvis Presley, as well as co-founder and former chairwoman of Elvis Presley Enterprises, the company that turned Graceland into one of the top tourist attractions in the USA. She has starred in many classic film and TV Series including ‘Naked Gun’ and ‘Dallas’. In intimate conversation with Radio and TV presenter Edith Bowman, Priscilla will share personal stories from her illustrious career, life and marriage to the King of Rock n Roll. Audiences will be treated to never-before-seen home footage of Priscilla and Elvis Presley.”
As it turned out it was a very enjoyable evening. The night was in two parts. The first half was Priscilla being interviewed by Edith (see above) who had been with her for the entire UK tour (and Newcastle was the last night of the tour). They sat beside each other in lovely comfy chairs while Priscilla talked about how she first met Elvis in Germany in the early 60s. She was over there because her father was in the military and he was stationed in Germany at the same time as Elvis was serving as a GI over there. Somehow through a mutual friend Priscilla was invited to a party which Elvis was also attending. Her parents would not let her go, but somehow, she managed to get along and she and Elvis met and a relationship began. At first her parents would not let her meet Elvis but eventually they relented, but only on the condition that Priscilla’s father or mother accompanied her. She was 14 years old at the time.
Priscilla told us “there was no physical relationship until much later.” Anyway, the friendship blossomed into a love affair and when they returned to The States the couple were married. All of the above was accompanied by some video footage of the time. Priscilla continued to talk about her life with Elvis, the birth of her sadly recently passed daughter Lisa Marie, and how things started to go wrong during the Las Vegas years, which saw Elvis having parties with lots of friends and girls in attendance. She talked about her love of Graceland and how, for financial reasons, they had to open the gates to the public. She is clearly still very involved with, and very protective of, the Graceland estate and Elvis’ heritage. She also spoke of her time in Dallas and showed some footage from the programme.
The final session took the form of questions from the audience. You could write a question on a card and Edith selected a few which she asked to Priscilla. One that sticks in my mind was “what was it like to have Michael Jackson as a son-in-law?” Priscilla paused to think a little. She revealed that she actually saw very little of Michael, and that he would purposely hide from her if she was visiting Lisa Marie. You got the impression that she was not entirely comfortable with the relationship. Throughout the evening she was a perfect lady, she looked lovely at 77 years old and clearly was enjoying her visit to the UK. The house was full and the first few rows of attendees all had lovely little booklets; they had clearly bought VIP tickets which included meeting Priscilla for a considerable premium. In some ways I wish I had done it. Photography was strictly outlawed so the pictures I have here are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. I purchased a book about Elvis from eBay just out of interest.
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