Boardroom Of Romance

After a lifetime of being an Elvis fanatic I must admit to experiencing a sense of deep personal satisfaction that one of us Jacksons has finally married into the Presley dynasty. “Pity it had to be Michael, though,” Elvis said when he called me last week, to confirm the news that his daughter, Lisa did in fact marry one of Joe Jackson’s sons in a secret ceremony recently.

Sadly I couldn’t push El on the issue as I was out when he called, leaving that cryptic message on my answering machine. But then maybe it’s best we didn’t talk as I don’t think he can get newspapers where he lives now and he’d have been really pissed off at the total lack of respect shown to this marriage of marriages by the media.

‘From Disneyland to Never Never Land’: that headline just about sums up the press response, the infamous public snogging in which the pair indulged at the MTV Awards in New York notwithstanding.

Despite the debilitating romanticism that was passed onto me by uncle Presley I must admit that my own immediate response was similarly cynical: in fact it sounds to me like a marriage made in showbiz hell – at once a damage limitation exercise by Jackson to counter the allegations of child sexual abuse levelled at him last year, and a calculated gamble by Lisa, with the chance of launching the singing career she’s been pursuing for at least two years.

If this marriage later turns out to be an Elton-Renata scam and Michael Jackson admits to being a “closet homo” or a creature totally devoid of sexual desires then he’s going to have some explaining to do to Bubbles, his pet chimpanzee – though they, I hear, have been divorced. Which is more than we can say for Lisa who, allegedly, forgot to legalise her separation from her previous husband, and father of her two children, Danny Keogh, before marrying Michael.

The judge who married the couple, meanwhile, reported that they were “non-committal” and “keen to get it all over with”, adding that “there were no loving looks exchanged” – though he didn’t say if he meant between Michael and himself, Lisa and himself, or even Michael and Lisa.

So where does that leave the most newsworthy couple since Adam and Naomi? My guess is back in the boardroom rather than the bedroom, plotting a two-tiered attack that will benefit both their careers.

Within days of the marriage announcement, Jackson and Presley-Jackson were photographed for the first time together as they stepped off a plane in Budapest. And what were they doing there? A little moon-and-June-ing under the August moonlight?

Well, not exactly. Michael was there to film a video for one of the five new tracks on his soon-to-be-released History compilation album, in which he is, apparently, depicted as “a freedom fighter who liberates Eastern Europe from Soviet occupation” (I kid you not). And if that’s hard to swallow how about this snippet from the proposed shooting script: “He will be filmed arriving in an unspecified Eastern European capital where he chases away Soviet troops and the city then will raise a monument to Michael Jackson, Freedom Fighter.”

On landing in Budapest the happy couple also reportedly revealed that they’ll be making their singing debut together during the forthcoming Elvis tribute concert in Memphis, where they and artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Garth Brooks and apparently even Bono will be performing Presley songs. The concert will be broadcast world-wide and will later be available on video, CD etc. And yes, you’ve guessed it, the highlight of the night will be a surprise appearance from you-know-who. (You mean Sam Snort, of course – Ed) (No, I think he means Joe Jackson, Ed – Sam Snort) (Actually I mean Elvis Presley. He’s not dead you know – Joe Jackson)

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All of this makes gruesomely perverse business sense. Whatever about his sexual preferences, Michael Jackson has always been one of the most shrewd business brains in rock. His sister La Toya summed up the marriage as “a PR exercise aimed at portraying Michael in a more manly, heterosexual light” and added that “girls are not a part of Michael’s life”. One can easily imagine, however, why he would want this “girl” to be.

Clearly, with his $250 million fortune to fall back on he’s unlikely to starve without the bonus of her $150 m. fortune. But, as the man who made a lifelong enemy of Paul McCartney by buying up the copyright to all the Beatles songs, Jackson seems to be similarly hungry to slap the Jackson name on the even more valuable Presley catalogue, which Lisa will control when she becomes sole trustee of the Elvis Presley Estate. Indeed his own private eye, Anthony Pellicano, has also claimed that Jackson and Presley have been having meetings since last February “because Michael has always been interested in obtaining the Presley catalogue.”

Then again, perhaps he does need the money, having paid out an estimated $10 million last year to silence the family of Jody Chandler, who claimed Jackson had consistently sexually abused their son.

And although Lisa has said, in relation to her marriage to Jackson, “I will dedicate my life to being his wife,” Pellicana has attempted to rubbish this claim. “I know Lisa Marie,” he said. “And she would not marry him unless there is something in it for her.”

Maybe he’s wrong. And, indeed, who does really “know” Lisa Marie Presley-Jackson? Certainly what effect Elvis’ grisly death had on Lisa Marie only she knows, though we can draw some conclusions from the fact that she later developed her own drugs problem. “When Lisa was 14, Elvis’ drug use was getting a lot of publicity, so we discussed her father’s death,” Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie’s mother has revealed. “I was surprised to discover she knew a lot of the details that I had not wanted her to know before. I was relieved. I didn’t want to be the one to alter the perception of her father.”

Later, Lisa herself also commented: “I guess I was picking up on something. I always felt protective of him. I was nine years old when my father died. So I was pretty aware.”

By the age of 14 Lisa was living with her mother and Mike Edwards, a male model who claimed in an autobiography that he “fantasised about having Elvis Presley’s little girl as he made passionate love to her mother.” One wonders how Lisa responded to such sordid revelations and, indeed, to the National Enquirer story, which claimed that Elvis and his mother had been lovers.

Whether in response or not, Lisa turned to marijuana, cocaine and even the kind of sedatives that had helped kill her father.

“We’d already been through a drug situation with Elvis, and I never thought she’d do it,” Priscilla later told Life Magazine. “There were times she’d be in a kind of fog or her eyes would be dilated and I started suspecting something was wrong. There were a lot of indications – she was always tired and would want to sleep. She’d avoid eye contact. I asked her and she’d deny it.”

Lisa was also interviewed in the same issue of Life , in one of only two interviews she has ever granted to the media. “People would ask me: ‘Why do you do that if your father died of drugs?’ But at that age I didn’t want to confront it,” she said. “I have to learn things by myself. (But) This one night, I had been up for three days. I was high on cocaine, and I had some more. It was either do it or go to sleep. I looked at it and decided, ‘that’s it. I don’t want this anymore’. And I flushed it down the toilet. I was with about five friends, and they didn’t know if I was serious. Once I decided to stop taking drugs, I found a new group of friends. I learned my lesson, and I won’t go near drugs again.”

That was 1988. However, two years later a British daily claimed that Lisa Marie was being brainwashed by a “freaky Scientology cult” and that she “even takes her own favourite ‘poison’ – a cocktail of prescription drugs. She knocks back barbiturates, prescribed as sleeping pills, swilled down with wine.”

Since then, Lisa claims to be “clean”, having submitted herself to a ‘Purification Rundown’ at a Scientology detoxification clinic.

“I’m pretty level-headed and I see it as the most incredible thing I’ve ever been involved in,” she said recently about the controversial cult religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard. “I was never quite happy. I always had a lot of questions and living and existing didn’t answer them, but only upset me more. If I didn’t have Scientology I’d be dead now. It’s a way out. It works.”

Hopefully, in 10 years time Lisa-Marie Presley will be able to say the same thing about her marriage to my name-sake.

Don’t put money on it, though. Even a relative of Michael’s like me wouldn’t. I just can’t put my finger on why . . .

One problem Elvis fans have always had with Lisa Marie is the fear that she will close down visiting facilities at Graceland and move in there to live with her children. Indeed, the thought of Michael Jackson leaning against one of those white pillars beside the mansion’s front door and waving down to his admirers brandishing new-style ‘King of Pop’ banners at Elvis’ famous music gates would doubtless seem particularly weird to Presley fans. Yet if turning Graceland back into a home is Lisa Marie Presley-Jackson’s choice, so be it.

“I had the best times of my life growing up at Graceland,” she has said. “I’ve always loved it there. There’s just an incredible feeling about that house even now that it’s open to the public. I go there three or four times a year. At night, when we’re alone in the house, and the same maids are cooking corn bread and black-eyed peas for us like they always did – it feels like the way it used to when my dad was alive.”