Behind the Gates at Graceland – Rolling Stone

Friends Jeanene Erdahl and Lisa Larson drove all night from Minnesota to Graceland, arriving in Memphis at 4:30 in the morning to queue up for a memorial honoring the life of Lisa Marie Presley, who died last week at 54. Later today, they’ll turn around and do it again.

Erdahl and Larson, who became fast friends seven years ago after bonding over their mutual love of Elvis, watched the memorial service just steps from where mourners like Axl Rose and Alanis Morissette were paying musical tribute to the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley.

“She was part of our generation, and [we] watched her go through struggles in her life and overcome them,” Erdahl tells Rolling Stone. “She had strength and character and pizzazz, and she just seemed so fun.”

Mourners traveled from around the world to pay their respects to Lisa Marie, a talented musician herself, as well as the caretaker of her father’s legacy for most of her life. Debbie Ramage of Courtenay, British Columbia, was planning to finally visit Graceland next year on her 60th birthday, but decided to come now instead to pay her respects to the family. “I think she was brilliant,” Ramage says of Lisa Marie. “She was very much like her father. She’s got that beautiful spirit like her dad, and she was a beautiful singer.”

Under a cold, gray winter sky in Memphis, family, friends, and a crowd of mourners estimated in the thousands gathered in front of a stage set up just behind the gates of Graceland — the mansion Elvis bought in 1957 and the home where Lisa Marie spent her first four years. Attendees lined the circular drive and stretched toward the stone wall running along the north side of the property as a succession of guests, from Priscilla Presley to Memphis Mafia alum Jerry Schilling, took the dais. As each guest exited the tent, the crowd — unprompted — raised aloft photos of Lisa Marie and waved them in tribute.

Like the overall mood, the musical performances were mostly somber, with Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins (whose friendship with Lisa Marie dates to their 2003 collaboration “Savior”) playing the Adore cut “To Sheila” on an acoustic guitar. Alanis Morissette took the stage with a pianist to sing “Rest,” which she wrote after Chester Bennington’s suicide in 2017 and released for Mental Health Action Day in 2021. 

Then in a surprise appearance that could only be overshadowed by a cameo from Elvis himself, Axl Rose emerged. Dressed in a long dark coat and scarf, the Guns N’ Roses frontman, vulnerable and emotional, stood behind the podium at Graceland and admitted he was tongue-tied and nervous about being asked to speak at the memorial. “I’m still in shock, as I feel…