"It'll be hard for her but she could do it. All her friends are $cientologists from what I can tell. I don't know what Danny Keogh (father of her kids) does for a living if anything, but as I recall he was a Delphi School kid and his parents were involved in $cientology so that probably goes way back.
I was introduced to Priscilla Presley by Spanky Taylor. We met at one of the Brilliant Film offices at Crossroads of the World. Priscilla needed someone to answer all the Elvis email she got. She would give me the mail, I would answer it under guidelines she provided, and type out the letters on her stationery. I had access to an early word processing machine so that made it easier. When Priscilla and I met for a good bit of time that first meeting, I thought she was the most beautiful woman and she was prettier than her pictures, amazing. Spanky told me afterward that she was shocked, that she had never seen Priscilla just loosen up and be herself with someone like she did with me. We got along very well after that, too. Then oneday Spanky mentioned that Priscilla was getting roughed up by a boyfriend who was an alcoholic and that she could use a good strong $cientology boyfriend.
I took that - perhaps wrongly - to mean that maybe Priscilla was interested in me and Spanky was being the "beard" about it. In any event, the LAST thing I wanted was to be known as Priscilla Presley's boyfriend. I was trying to make it as a musician in L.A. at the time. So I wrote Priscilla a letter and said that I was very fond of her but if I kept working for her I would probably fall for her, so I quit. The word I got after that was that Priscilla was really pissed, because no one had ever quit working for her or Elvis.
The next time I see Priscilla at Celebrity Centre, she'll barely say hello. But then a little further down the line I meet her live-in boyfriend, actor/model Michael Edwards, and we really get along. One day I went over to their house to listen to a presentation about something Michael was trying to do, a resort real estate development on a river island in West Virginia where he used to go to camp. Priscilla wasn't there (naturally) but Lisa was, same old sullenness.
Priscilla had Lisa in a private French school in Beverly Hills and she was experimenting with drugs. She pulled her out of there and put her in (I think it was) $cientology-based Apple School and Lisa got off drugs. Of course, the "church" later attacked the Apple School people and ran them out of business I believe.
I would see Lisa on occasion at Celebrity Centre. One day at a break I said hey, you ever gonna make your own music?
"No!"
Well, would you like to be in a rock video?
Pause. "Maybe."
I didn't follow up because I didn't want to bother her and she wasn't enthusiastic about it
Fast forward a few years. I'm living in a house a block north of Celebrity Centre, I'm putting on two one-act plays of mine at Celebrity Centre ...There's a guest house behind the house I'm living and a garage. In the garage a band rehearses, with Chick Corea's son Thad on drums, and one of other members is Danny Keogh. One day I'm listening to them (they're just kids to me) and there's Lisa Marie, hanging out with Danny. Next thing you know, they're always hanging out and they get married. Even then, she had that sullen face and was very shy, but a nice kid, anyway.
If Elvis was alive, she'd have never been involved. He spotted how screwed up $cientology was the first time it was explained to him at the old Sunset Blvd. mission. And here's how I hope Lisa feels about $cientology someday"