The Most Complicated Musical Families in Pop Culture History: A Guide

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The Presley Family

Dubbed the “King of Rock and Roll,” Elvis rose to fame from relative obscurity after he released his first single in 1956. A successful music career quickly became a multimedia empire, and he brought his friends, family and team to live with him at his Graceland estate in Memphis, Tennessee, which would quickly become a cultural landmark.

Elvis married Priscilla Presley in 1967 when he was 32 and she was 21. The pair welcomed their only child together, Lisa Marie, in 1968 before their divorce in 1973. Shortly thereafter, Elvis’ health steadily declined, bolstered by the deluge of drugs he was taking on a daily basis, many of which were prescribed by his doctors. He died at age 42 in 1977 of a heart attack caused by a combination of drugs in his system.

While their relationship was often strained, Priscilla raised Lisa Marie — with the help of the Church of Scientology, to which she was introduced by John Travolta — following Elvis’ death. Lisa Marie’s adolescence was fraught with substance abuse and instability, with the young Graceland heir going in and out of boarding schools and rehabilitation centers.

After Lisa Marie met Danny Keough through Scientology and married him, they welcomed daughter Riley Keough in 1989 and son Benjamin Keough in 1992. Just 20 days after divorcing Danny in 1994, Lisa Marie married Michael Jackson, who was in the midst of fighting against child molestation charges. They divorced in 1996, and Lisa Marie went on to marry Michael Lockwood, with whom she welcomed twin daughters Harper and Finley in 2008. They ultimately divorced in 2021.

While she had a difficult relationship with music due to the pressure of being Elvis’ daughter, Lisa Marie released three full-length studio albums in the early aughts. She also distanced herself from the Church of Scientology in 2013.

Lisa Marie’s youngest child, Benjamin — whom she compared to her father, writing in her memoir, “Ben was so much like him it scared me” — died by suicide at 27 years old in 2020. Riley wrote in her and her mother’s memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, that the grief from Ben’s death together with Lisa Marie’s addiction issues ultimately contributed to her mother’s own death from cardiac arrest in early 2023.

While Riley is primarily an actress, she has also dabbled in music, notably in the Emmy-nominated series Daisy Jones & the Six, in which she plays a singer in a ’70s rock band. Following her mother’s death, Riley — who welcomed daughter Tupelo with husband Ben Smith-Petersen in 2022 — became the sole owner of the Graceland estate, inciting legal issues and further personal strain on her relationship with her grandmother Priscilla.