Could a hologram-like Elvis tour? If 'tasteful,' says Lisa Marie Presley

There's one question, Lisa Marie Presley says, that she's been getting from everyone, reporters and non-reporters alike: Did she see the projected image of the late rapper Tupac Shakur at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April?

It's a natural query. After all, the "Elvis Presley in Concert Tour" pairs original members of Elvis' TCB Band with a large image of the king of rock 'n' roll projected on a video screen. Tupac's "appearance" at Coachella, which was a projected 2-D image that was widely (and incorrectly) labeled a hologram by fans and the media, would seem to offer an evolutionary hint for the next step of the Elvis Presley in Concert Tour.

"I didn’t know about the hologram-thing until I started getting asked about it," Lisa Marie Presley said recently during an interview at her management's West Hollywood offices. "But I saw it a few nights ago and I was like, ‘Whoa!’ That technology is pretty advanced."

Presley said she would consider signing off on a similar projection of her father. Don't gasp -- the younger Presley has already cut a duet with her late father. In 2007, her vocals were added to a charity single of Presley's 1969 track "In the Ghetto."

"If they can come up with something tasteful, creative and classy, I wouldn’t object," she said. "That’s as close as people can get now. I don’t mind simulating as long as it’s not awful or degrading."

Of course, the decision to embark on such a tour wouldn't entirely be in the hands of Elvis' heir. Presley sold much of her stake in Elvis Presley Enterprises in 2005 to CKX, the company that also owns 19 Entertainment Limited, known best for the global "Idol" franchise.

Presley last week released her first album in seven years, “Storm & Grace,” a record that brings her back to her family roots. The collection pairs her dusty, robust vocals with moody country and blues accents made famous by the Sun Studio recording house that captured the voice of her father. The stripped-down affair is produced by T Bone Burnett, an artist with a reputation for possessing a reverential, encyclopedic view of the American songbook.

Currently living in England, Presley said she hopes to someday return to Memphis, Tenn.,  and live near her childhood home.

"I have the warmest, happiest, fondest moments when I’m there," Presley said. "I would like to get a home there. My family is there and my babies love it. Nashville gets all the glory, but Memphis is the blues. Memphis needs the light." 

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-- Todd Martens

Image: Elvis Presley in concert at the Forum in Inglewood. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Lisa Marie Presley tunes in to her roots with ‘Storm & Grace’

With a little help from T Bone Burnett, Lisa Marie Presley gets back to bluesy-country basics in ‘Storm & Grace’ and breaks free from outside expectations.

Lisa Marie Presley doesn’t seem to mind that everyone in the penthouse office of Simon Fuller’s XIX Entertainment in West Hollywood can see her when she extends both of her middle fingers in the direction of a reporter.

She used the gesture to exemplify how she felt about being asked to promote a “sexier image” at one point in her career. But for a woman whose life has been defined by public scrutiny, the move spoke volumes. Presley, 44, is done trying to live up to expectations that aren’t her own.

More proof? Her first album in seven years, “Storm & Grace” (out this week) finds Presley singing, “She got no talent of her own, it’s just her name,” on deluxe-edition track “Sticks and Stones,” her voice a painful wail while slide guitars whisk around her like unseen demons. In “Un-Break,” Presley wonders whether she was once a “backstabbing liar” and is only getting what she deserves against the sound of shuffling western-gothic grooves.

The album, her first for Universal Republic, may serve as a career reboot, but it also brings her back to her family roots, pairing her dusty, robust vocals with moody country and blues accents made famous by the Sun Studio recording house that captured the voice of her father. The stripped-down affair is produced by T Bone Burnett, an artist with a reputation for possessing a reverential, encyclopedic view of the American songbook.

It’s a far cry from Presley’s last album — a polished affair marked by glossy, Top 40 guitars and studio-enhanced vocals. “Yeah, I know,” Presley interrupts talk about the slick nature of her last release. “I was behind that. I tried to smooth it over, to hide behind it. I wanted louder guitars. I wanted the vocals tripled. All that.”

“I was insulated,” Presley says of that time, adding that she surrounded herself with a team of friends and employees who told her only what she wanted to hear.

“There was a scene woven around me that I had helped weave,” she says. “It was a personal scene -- employees, friends. It was an entourage. That’s all a big mistake. It’s all the stuff that happens to a typical L.A., high-profile…”

Presley trails off and waves her hand, palm up, as if to say, “You know, that scene.” But no one really does. After all, Elvis, the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, had but one daughter, and it’s not many who see their childhood home in Memphis, Tenn., become an internationally renown tourist attraction. That says nothing of Presley’s penchant for dominating the tabloids in her late 20s and early 30s, largely due to her short-lived marriage to Michael Jackson.

After releasing and promoting “Now What,” Presley embarked on a research project: herself. While certainly not ignorant of what was said and written about her -- specifically the outside expectations of how she was or wasn’t living up to her last name -- Presley says she was shielded from much of it.