Michael Jackson and Lisa-Marie Presley: 20 months of pop's strangest marriage
25 years ago, in the Dominican Republic, the self-proclaimed King of Pop and the daughter of the King of Rock said "I do."
They had known each other since she was 7 years old. It was 1975. Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis's daughter, a fan of Michael Jackson, the youngest of the Jackson Five, had come to see one of his shows in Las Vegas. They met again 17 years later. She was nine years younger than Jacko and had two children from her first marriage. Friends say that the reason that life brought them back together was that he wanted to record an album produced by Michael; enemies, that the spark that sparked their love jumped right after the allegation of abuse by the minor singer Jordan Chandler, in 1993, and that Jackson silenced by loosening 20 million dollars.
Coincidence or not, the one nicknamed "the most bizarre marriage in history" was forged during those days, in constant phone calls. In fact, the proposal was, according to Lisa Marie told Rolling Stone, by the earpiece: "If I asked you, would you marry me?" Said the king of pop. "I would," she replied. Later, Jackson would invent a proposal - repeatedly denied by Lisa Marie - much more romantic: he came, Eva naked on television and kneeling on the ground.
On April 29, Lisa Marie officially divorced her husband, Danny Keough. Just three weeks later, on May 26, 1994, 25 years ago now, Michael and Lisa were married. They did it under the covers, in a hotel in the Dominican Republic, although some say that Michael thought that the wedding would take place in his private jet. There were no friends. There were no relatives. He didn't dare tell his beloved mother; she did not tell her family. His mother, Priscilla, was enraged: for the divo's mother-in-law it was just a marketing operation.
The officiant had not finished uttering the words "can you kiss the bride" and the suspicions had already begun. What happened in the privacy of their home, what is pompously known as the "marriage thalamus", only they know. There are versions for all tastes, depending on the biographer. Some claim that Michael Jackson died without heterosexual relationships. His so-called "girlfriends" Tatum O'Neal and Brooke Shields always admitted that he never tried to steal a kiss from them. To Michael's former PR Bob Jones: "Michael had no attraction to women." Lisa Marie's version differs completely from that of her predecessors: according to the daughter of "the pelvis", the first time they did the "moonwalking" was at Donald Trump's mansion in Florida. According to the National Enquirer, dean of all kinds of gossip, Michael liked to do it standing up and Lisa Marie didn't mind: “It was absolutely wild. It started very slow and then asked for more and more ”.
One of Michael's biographers, J. Randy Taraborrelli has written, based on the testimony of a friend of Lisa Marie named Monica Pastelle that, according to her, Michael was very "hot" and had a "very active and intense" sex life. According to the same source, Michael also had some very particular filias. He could not bear for his wife to see his naked body and he would also become fierce if she saw him without makeup. In addition, they made love to the boy painted as a trolleybus, so the sheets always woke up as a pictorial composition of a preschool girl. At dawn, when she tried to give him a good morning kiss, Jacko would rush to the bathroom to embalm himself in her face. Taraborrelli has also written that: "he liked that she wore jewelry in bed" and that: "they liked to play switch roles", although Lisa never specified what kind of characters.
To quell the gossip, the couple appeared on television in June 1995 to promote Michael's new album HIStory, and this time it was Lisa Marie who took the lead and stated emphatically: “We will have children but no I'll say when That only God knows ”. But the children did not arrive. Tarabarrelly collects testimonies from friends of Lisa Marie according to which: “they continued to have good sex, but they no longer made love, but they fought continuously. Lisa began to wonder if it hadn't been a mistake to choose him as the man of her life. "
In fact, shortly after the TV interview, Lisa Marie was seen frolicking in Hawaii with her ex. According to the chronicles of the time, it was she who decided to end what many considered no longer a marriage of convenience, but a buffoonery. Lisa Marie was fed up with Michael leaving the house without giving reasons for his whereabouts and constantly playing to make him jealous with an alleged relationship with Lady Di. To curl the curl, Michael could think of nothing more than to say that his late father-in-law, Elvis, had undergone a rhinoplasty, which deeply hurt his daughter. That yes, was missing the final number of someone who dominated the show like no one else.
In September 1995, although the couple were unofficially separated, Michael begged Lisa Marie to attend the MTV Awards gala. Michael was going to be the big star, with a 20-minute medley whose apogee would occur when he brought his lips together with those of his (supposed) beloved while pronouncing the phrase: “and they said that we were not going to last”. Everything went more or less according to plan… until the moment of the kiss. Lisa Marie's discomfort was more than evident in the eyes of the planet. As he later told Playboy: "I didn't want him to brush me." Idea that Rolling Stone would insist on later: "I looked at him as if to say:" Don't even think about getting close to me. "
Their marriage lasted 20 months. The man who had defined himself as “the loneliest being on the planet”, with that loneliness that somehow reminded that of his late father-in-law, returned to Neverland, his mansion, with Bubbles, his chimpanzee, to protect yourself from the increasingly frequent complaints of sexual abuse. That same year he married Debbie Rowe, his nurse and dermatologist, who would soon become pregnant.
