LMP-INTERVIEWMAG-INTRVW

"Interview" Magazine
May 2005

SHE MAY HAVE INHERITED THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS LIP CURL-ALONG WITH A MOUNTAIN OF EXPECTATIONS-BUT
WITH HER DEFIANT NEW ALBUM, LISA MARIE PRESLEY TAKES IT ALL ON. HERE SHE TALKS WITH A FELLOW MUSICIAN
WHO KNOWS ALL ABOUT WALKING THROUGH FIRE
BY MELISSA ETHRIDGE PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL GREENBERG

MELISSA ETHRIDE: You grew up in the most famous household ever, and if anyone had a huge wall of expectations to climb-a mountain,
really-it was you. But as I listen to your lyrics and your voice, there is something very relatable. Tell then how someone with your background
can write so personally about that experience yet make it so universal?
LISA MARIE PRESLEY: Well, that's what music's done for me all my life. I love singer-songwriters. My favorite is the 70's stuff, like Jim Croce and
Gordon Lightfoot. I'm just a huge music fan. In the end, it's my job as a songwriter to take whatever it is that I am feeling and make it knowable to
others, to put it in such a way so that other people can go, "Hey, yeah, I've been there." I don't realize that initially. I mean, with my first record, To
Whom It May Concern [2003], I just wrote and purged, and when I got letters and read people's responses to this line or that line, I went, Holy shit! I
actually do have a really big responsibility. I really do have to think about what I'm writing, because I didn't realize that I could affect people in that
way. That is sort of what I set out to do in the beginning-maybe, perhaps way too naively, not realizing the mountain I'd have to climb to do that. I
really don't want to sell myself or explain my life experiences and my errors because I've grown up in front of everyone, and people happen to know
what I've done or who I've been with. A lot of famous people break through with their own work first, and then their personal lives get involved. But
for me, the process was the reverse. Did I answer your question?
ME: Yes you did, because I also now know what it's like to have a personal life that's become bigger than the music.
LMP: That's the nature of our current culture.
ME: I know, and it's wicked weird! It's such noise. But I feel like a fan when I listen to your music because I find the things that move me or
things that I relate to, but I also find myself going, "I wonder who she's talking about? I want to know!" [Presley laughs] There is a lot of real
sexuality in your singing.
LMP: Which is another subject, I have to say. Because on the cover of the new album, Now What, I'm in cords and fucking Converse. I absolutely
refused to bare midriff or anything like that because I am against all that stuff.
ME: Right on! I remember when I made my first record in '88. MTV was in full swing, and I was like, "Well, what am I going to wear?" I thought
that someone needed to tell me what to look like. I never trusted myself, and the more I went through it, I kept asking, "Does this fit? Is this
me?" Finally, when I went to do the video for "Come to My Window," [off 1993's Yes I Am] I said, "Fuck it! I like my leather pants, and I like my
jean top. I like my T-shirts, and I'm through trying to play that game." Once I did that, it all seemed to fall together. Our society thinks that it's
looking for the next thing, but what it's really looking for is truth, and every time it rings out, it rises to the top. With your first album, so many
of the songs were so true. Of course, "Lights Out" was the big hit.
ME: In my heart it was a hit. [laughs] And when you sing about going back to Graceland, it is possible, as a listener, for just a moment, to slip
into your head and go, "Oh, my God! What if in the back of my daddy's house there was a frickin' graveyard-and there was a space for me?
What if I knew where I was going to be married-uh, I mean, buried."
LMP: Same thing. [both laugh]
ME: I get chills when I think about it. Well, I'm glad by the time you made that record you had lived a bit, because I think that's a lof of the
trouble with what we have now in music. We're putting artists out there at 18 years old. They haven't had to work for it.
LMP:   You have to be bitten by the snake of life a few times in order to have the knowledge to write about it. You have to experience it.
ME: So let's move on to Now What. I want to talk to you a little bit about Linda Perry, who you worked with on a lot of this album.
LMP: I think before we worked together, I had a little bit of a misconception about Linda. I immediately associated her with being a hit song doctor
or whatever, and I immediately had a-what's the word?
ME: Aversion.
LMP: Yes, an aversion to that. I heard that she was interested in writing with me and that she kind of liked the first record and probably thought it
was overproduced, which fine, because it was. So, I eventually went, "Okay, let's meet." And we just really hit it off. She's like a chameleon. She
can conform to anything or anyone. The first song we worked on together was "High Enough," and that's so not a hit that I'm actually really excited
about it. I don't think any of the songs on this album would ever be played on the radio, to tell you the truth. But that one was our test run to see
how it would go, and I realized that working with her was not going to be any kind of compromise. I think she's had a lot of artists go to her and ask,
"What do you see for me?" Because she has that ability to take an artist and write the lyrics and write the song and push them in a direction. So, I
think she had an idea for me in the beginning, adn I was like, "Uh, no. This is not going to work. Let's just sit down and write and see what
happens." So we did that, and it just went from there.
ME: Let's talk about "Shine." I love that Pink, who sings on the track, doesn't get in your way at all. She sings, and she's great.
LMP: Believe me, she can sing, man. She's the real deal-and that was not a preconceived notion on my part, to be honest with you.
ME: No?
LMP: No. Her ending up on the song just happened one night when we were drunk after being at a bar. We were working, and Linda dragged me
to a bar down the street. Pink was there, we had a few drinks, and I was ready to go out and have some fun. But Linda was like, "Back to the
studio." So I sat in there, and I was humming, and Pink was lying on the floor next to me, and I was trying to lock into a melody on the chorus. And
every time I'd do that, she'd start humming as well. So I was like, "Can you please do that on the album?" Then, listening to her sing in the studio, I
was like, "Damn it, woman!" She blew me away. While she was in the sound booth singing, I was like, "We know you can sing. Will you please
not fucking outsing me on my own album? Just stop it." [Ethridge laughs] The whole scenario was very rock 'n' roll.
ME: "Dirty Laundry"-this is a Don Henley song straight out of the early 80's that deals with the media, right?
LMP: Eighties. Yep. Early.
ME Tell me why you decided to cover it?
LMP: Because I am absolutely disgusted with the state of affairs that we are in as a society, and I felt that way 15 years ago, and I feel that way
even more now. I think that song is even more appropriate now than when it was first recorded, adn not in that whining celebrity, woe-is-me way.
It's just that our entertainment right now is based on the demise, humiliation, and darkest hours of others. You know, those shows like Trauma:
Life in the ER., Cops, things like that, even American Idol-I'm sorry, but that show is just people putting themselves in vulnerable positions. It
makes me ill. But I've always loved "Dirty Laundry." I always wanted to do it. But I didn't want it to be misconstrued in a way that people would think
I was talking about myself. It was just a cover that I wanted to do, and it was the safest song to try to go to radio with because people already know
it.
ME: How crazy is it that we have to do an old song to get on the radio now? I'm dealing with that at the moment. I'm going to put out a
greatest-hits collection, and my record company is like, "What cover are you going to do?" When did this happen?
LMP:   Because the record company people don't know what they're doing right now. That's why I was like, "Okay, you want a cover? I'll give you a
bloody cover! It's heavy, it's the truth, and it's going to shoot you right between the eyes!" "Dirty Laundry" might not even get played too much. It
might be too deep.
ME: Well, I really hope that radio opens up and plays that song and that by doing that, they allow another one of thse songs on your album to
come through.
LMP: Thank you. It's doubtful, but thank you.
ME: I know. The second single doesn't exist anymore does it?
LMP: No, it doesn't. Artists used to have a few records to build themselves and find their way. But now, man, you get that song that doesn't do
whatever in the first week, and you're done. It's like the way they treat the first week's box office in the movie industry. That's what it's become. It's
about money and showing your stomach and that you're sexy and you're cute and you're fitting into some thing that they think should be out there,
and then they'll play you. It's almost like Stepfordville. I'm more the slow-climb kind of girl. [laughs]
ME: All right, so, moving on, let's talk about "When You Go." That's one of the songs where I was thinking, I wonder who she's singing about?
[both laugh] So, later I will have to get you drunk, and you will tell me.
LMP: Actually, that one is both metaphorical and literal. I think I've had a few people in my life who are very, very close to me going through various
things, traveling down weird roads in their lives, taking the wrong path. I noticed one time Tori Amos referred to her sons as "she." I thought that's
really remarkable because she's giving them a lot of personality. But now that I've been doing this for a while, I know what that's about. You just try
to let the songs have their own life. "When You Go" ended up being more of a prophetic song, like an oracle. A friend of mine, Johnny Ramone,
was dying. I wrote the lyrics on the airplane going from L.A. to New York, and as I was writing, I was thinking about something else, but then I got
the call that Johnny was dying in the hospital at the same time. He made it out of the hospital, and he lived for three more months; but it was a
really hard song to sing because I realized that it applied to him just as much as it applied to everything else I was writing about.
ME: Okay, so I'm really going to get you drunk, and you're going to tell me who the song "Idiot" is about.
LMP: Someone who really pissed me off.
ME: No, really? With a line like "I guess I'm about as happy for you as I would be a cockroach in my food," I couldn't tell. [both laugh] Oh, Lord,
I don't ever want to get on your bad side!
LMP: That is about somebody who I went through years of hell with before I finally just went, "You know what? I've just had it with your ass. I'm
going to shoot you at point blank, right between the eyes, and nail you right where I see you."
ME: That's another thing about your album, which is what you're speaking in a way not many woman are allowed to speak.
LMP: [laughs] Right. Especially on that song.
ME: But I think it's so refreshing right now in this society to let a woman be angry, to let a woman be fierce. With "Idiot," there's no question
about how you feel. You don't try to hide it. That's going to help woman in Louisiana who's been done wrong and has been told by the other
women, or her mother, that you have to be a good girl and not say anything.
LMP: It's just a good "fuck you" song.
ME I also love htat it shows a lot of your musical influences, like the Ramones and '70s rock 'n' roll. What was so great about the '70s was
that there was such a broad spectrum of popular music. We had Bruce Springsteen, we had the Sex Pistols, we had Debby Boone, you
know? [laughs] We had all of that stuff! And now it's so narrrow.
LMP: Well, there was more to listen to back then. Music wasn't just based around whatever trends were going on at the minute. Right now things
are not good. It was against my better judgement to even put a record out right now.
ME: But the other thing that you have to deal with is that because of who you are, you had to do all that crazy promotional stuff before you
ever got down to playing at the Stone Pony or whatever little club. You had to play at some stadium.
LMP: Or on Good Morning America. Actually, this is funny: When I did Divas Live, this VH1 thing, first of all, I was like, "I'm not a diva."
ME: No, you're not.
LMP: Anyhow, they were asking, "Do you want to do a duet?" So I got Pat Benatar, and we did "Heartbreaker." I just remember that we were about
to walk out onstage, and I just looked at her and went, "I'm going to puke right now." She was like, "Lisa, I don't know how the hell you're doing all
this in your thirties. You're just starting out, and you're doing this kind of stuff right off the bat? I couldn't do it. I started when I was a kid." You did,
too. And I'm being thrown out in front of all this stuff, and I'm dealing with it, I'm doing it, I'm skidding through, barely by the skin of my ass. So this
time, with Now What, I was very adamant about only doing a few big things to promote the album, because I understand that I have to, but most of
what I'm going to be doing is touring. There is an upside adn a downside to being a celebrity kid. You have a platform, you can use it; it might
open doors, but from there on, you're on your own. It's not about who your parents are anymore. That can go for so long, and if you're an idiot or a
dumb shit, then it's not going to last.
ME: Adn the truth is, some people are waiting for you to have a fall.
LMP: Exactly. That's what I realized when I started rehearsing for this record. We were preparing for a show, and I just burst into tears. I was like, "I
don't know why I am doing this. This is crazy." And the reason was because I feel sometimes like there's a lot on me. There's a lot of expectation,
and not from the fans at all. People do want to see you fall. There are people out there who cannot wait to rip you to shreds. So I just had a
meltdown for a second because I was like, This is not fun for me, getting nervous and having to do Oprah and all these things. It's fun when it's
about doing shows for the people who like my music, so tht's what I want to make it about.
ME: So, now I'm going to really turn interviewer and ask you a personal question. How old were you when you had that first thought to
yourself, I want to sing?
LMP: Three years old.   I just would be in front of the mirror, you know, with a pretend microphone, playing my music. I had a little 45-player in my
room, and I'd sit there and listen all day to my dad's records or Neil Diamond's or the Sweet Inspirations' or whoever the hell I was listening to at
the time. That was all I cared about, but I never had any kind of conscious thought about what it meant for me to sing in any bigger sense. When I
was 21 and I had my daughter, I actually recorded Aretha Franklin's "Baby, I Love You" just to see if I could sing. Shit, it was a hell of a thing to try
to sing, but I pulled it off all right, adn then I started writing immediately.
ME: I remember that, growing up, I always knew that Elvis had a daughter, but we didn't really see you much during your adolescence. Your
mom kept you out of everything.
LMP: Thank God for my mother. Now that I see what can happen with people growing up in the public eye, and seeing young girls and the wooha,
I'm glad she took me out of the scene.
ME: Kudos to your mom-which bringus to the song "Raven." I'm not often moved to tears anymore when I hear something, but every time I
listen to "Raven," it slays me. There is a recording of you as a child on there. How old were you?
LMP: That's from when I was three. I've had that recording for a long time, and it actually makes me cry to hear it. It was a rough song to do. My
mother was young when she had me. She was a baby. She was pioneering some road that no woman had ever walked in that kind of way. And it
takes a little time to find your way with somebody, but in the end, I adore my mother, and I thought, "You know what? I didn't write anything about
her on the last record, and I need to. I need to acknowledge my mother because she's really important to me."
ME: And so the title song, "Now What"-there's a lot of death on there.
LMP: No, not death. It's more about vulnerability. "I'll Figure It Out," "Shine," "Now What," and "Turn to Black" are all about me realizing I'm not part
of anything, whether it be a group of friends or a style or a clique or something that I tried to be part of at some point or thought I was a part of or
tried to compromise myself into being part of. I think it's just me coming to terms with the fact that I'm just fucking not. "Now What" is about
something that I felt was concrete in my life that, to me, was really important, that I tried to do and felt like I failed at.
ME: It's so fascinating to be on the other side of this because people come to me with their interpretations of a song of mine, and I'm like,
"How the heck did they get that?" It's so subjective, isn't it? My reading probably has so much to do with what's going on with me because I
have been just so close to death. [Ethridge has been undergoing treatment for breast cancer.]
LMP: That's all I talk about or think about lately, death-death-death-death-death. It really tests your faith. That's one thing that Steve [Jones, the
former Sex Pistols guitarist] and I talked about the day Johnny died. Johnny was lying there, dead, and I'm looking at my friend, thinking, "Jesus
Christ. Where did he go?" It's just the worst thing-I mean, whoever came up with this whole plan?
ME: Life and death?
LMP:   Yeah. [Ethridge laughs] Can you come up with something a little better for an ending? For the love of God.
ME: Well, it might be really fabulous once you go through the ending. Having been so close to it now myself, I have come a little to peace with
it. But I don't need to do it now. I have a whole lot more to do. Johnny and the Ramones, though, should be an inspiration for atists like us
because they followed their hearts and did what they loved.
LMP: And they never got played on the radio.