Lisa Marie Presley

There's no reason to be careful anymore," explains Lisa Marie Presley, "because everything is in that record. It's frustrating, sitting with all this for years and years, not having said a word. I want it understood where I'm coming from." Thirty-five years in a world that has bombarded her with its views of who she is, who she was and who she should be; thirty-five years of a scrutiny that began before her eyes even opened for the first time; thirty-five years as the daughter of the first and most famous rock star of them all; thirty-five years trying to navigate the gilded but treacherous path life has offered her . . . and now Lisa Marie Presley is about to release her first album, To Whom It May Concern. "You want to know who I am, and what I am, it's in here," she says. "This is how either fucked up I am, or crazy or deranged or stupid or whatever you want to call it. This is me, and it's from me, and that's the only reason I did it."

For most of these years she has avoided talking in public. (There was, of course, the very surreal live TV interview with Diane Sawyer alongside her second husband, Michael Jackson, but we will get to all of that.) Now, having found a reason to speak, Lisa Marie Presley turns out to be the kind of woman who doesn't mince words or glide evasively over the tricky areas. After thirty-five years of biting her tongue, if she's going to talk, then she'd rather convey her truth as it really is, not some carefully sanitized version of it. But first . . .

"No, no, no! Out! Out!" she cries, breaking off our handshake as we are introduced at her house in a gated community north of Los Angeles, just before Christmas. There is a peacock crisis. She moves toward the back door, crouched, with her hands in front of her, ushering the Presleys' pet peacock back outside. "Peacock in the house," she announces, unnecessarily, then makes us both tea.

She is wearing a 1982 Blue Oyster Cult tour T-shirt over a long-sleeve undershirt. In the background, Beck's Sea Change plays; as dusk draws in, the Verve's Urban Hymns will follow. I haven't expected to be disconcerted by the way she looks, but just for the first few minutes, I am. Her resemblance to her father is more striking and extreme in the flesh than in photos. There is something confounding about seeing these over-familiar but unanchored, iconic features hovering above real shoulders, alive and in motion.