* Lisa.. we’re still friendly, but she’s running around. She just changed her number and we don’t have the new one yet.
-was part of the attraction to Lisa Marie that she had her own money and her own fame and you didn’t have to be anxious that she was interested in you for the wrong reasons?
* Absolutely, and she didn’t take a penny [when we got divorced]. She didn’t want anything. She makes about a million dollars a year from Elvis memorabilia and selling all that stuff and she has her own thing. She is not here to take, you know.
-So that means there was almost like one girl in the whole world that you could marry because even a rich woman would want your name. You needed someone with money and a name. You were down to a Presley or a McCartney, something like that.
* I know. Lisa was great. She was a sweet person. But it’s hard to tie me down. I can’t stay in one place one time so that’s why I don’t know if I [can] be completely married all the time.
-Did you want to be a father to her kids?
* Yes.
-Do you still stay in touch with the children?
*Yes, and with her.
-But marriage is too confining?
* Yes. I don’t know whether I’m disciplined enough because I am such a rolling stone. I have such a life when I m always on the move and women don’t like that. They want you to be settled in one place all the time but I have to move. I have been in the same city as where my house is and I’ll check into a hotel just to feel like I’m going somewhere. My house is right there. I guess I am just moving all the time, moving.
-Do you get lonely?
* Like lonely for a wife? For like a mate? Like that?
-Yeah.
* I’ve been through two bad divorces and I just got out of the second one. Even when I was married to those women that I was married to I’d go to bed hurting. I was hurting. I was crying last night as I went to sleep and I didn’t sleep good last night. And I cry, Schmuley, because I feel this.. and I’m not trying, I’m telling you the honest truth and if you don’t believe me you can ask Frank. Frank knew how I was hurting. I just was feeling the pain of the children who suffer and I was hurting so much…. I think that’s where real love comes from, if I can help, I’m fine and I don’t need the other [romantic love]. You know if I meet some girl somewhere and I think shes beautiful, which I see a lot of them, that’s great. I mean, I’ll go on a date or something. Nothing wrong with that. Jennifer Lopez looked awfully good the other day, she did. I was shocked ‘cause I never thought…. She looked good [Michael laughs as he says this].
-But have you given up on women understanding you? You tend to think that children will understand you a lot better?
* I’m not easy to live with for a wife. I’m not easy and I know I’m not easy. Because I give all my time to someone else. I give it to children, I give it to somebody sick somewhere, to the music. And women want to be the center, And I remember Lisa Marie would always say to me ‘I’m not a piece of furniture, I’m not a piece of furniture. You just can’t…’ I say… ‘I don’t want you to be a piece of funiture’, and you know, there’d be some sick little girls calling on the phone and she’d get mad and hand up on them. And you know, I feel that’s my mission, Shmuley. I have to do it.
-What if you found a woman who was that soft, who was incredibly soft?
*Like a Mother Teresa or a Lady Diana or.. That would be great that would be perfect.
-Would that be better than having to do it on your own?
*Absolutely, and Lisa was great with going to the hospitals with me, and she was so sweet about that. They would tie the babies to the bed or chain the children down. We’d go unchain.. we’d go free all the babies. I hated that and she discovered a lot of that injustice with me. Countries like Romania and Prague, Czechoslovakia and all that, Russia. You should see what they do to the children in those you’d be shocked….
-Is it your dream that one day, like part of the messianic future, as far as you’re concerned, that all the kids will come and live in Neverland and live happily ever after?
*Yes.
-And if you had the resources truly you would just…
*I would do it Schmuley. I would do it. I would love it.
-Lisa Marie was good about at least visiting. So she had no problem going and doing some of the compassionate things of giving these children love and making them feel special?
*She had no problem doing that but her and I had several big arguments ‘cause she’s very territorial with her children. Her children were [her major concern] .. and I said, ‘No, all the children are our children’ and she never liked that coming from me. She was very angry about that. Plus she had a fight with me one time when two little boys in London killed this other kid and I was going to visit them ‘cause the Queen gave them adult sentencing of life. These were like 11 and 10 yr old boys and I was going to go to the prison to visit them. She said ‘You idiot. You’re just rewarding them for what they did if you do that’. I said ‘How dare you say that. I bet if you can trace their life you can find they didn’t have parents around, they didn’t have any love, nobody there to hold them.’ She said ‘Well you’re wrong.’ I said ‘No, you’re wrong.’ Then the information came out they came from broken families, were never watched as little kids, attended to. Their pacifier was those Chucky movies with the stabbings and the killings, and that’s how they became conditioned to that.
-Did she admit then that you had a point?
*Nope. Well, she thought I’m rewarding bad kids [by visiting them].
-Did she want you to be a father to her children?
*Well that was once asked of her. She was asked that question on TV and she said, ‘No they have a father. Their father is Keogh’, that other guy. But I was really good to her children. Every day I’d bring them home something and they’d be waiting by the window for me and hug me. I love them. I miss them so much.
-Did she get used to living in Neverland or was it too isolated?
*Lisa didn’t live at Neverland. We visited Neverland the way… I lived at her house in the city and every once in a while we visited Neverland. It’d be like our big fun weekend.
-And her children liked it?
*Are you kidding me? They were like in heaven.
-And you were happy to show it to them
*Mm hmm.
-Did it have more meaning to you suddenly when you had a family to show it to?
*Yes, yes. It’s just a place to make families, to bring them together, to bring people together through love and playful spirit and nature. It makes families closer, Neverland. It’s healing.
-Since you idolise the family was it very hard for you when you had to go through that divorce then?
*Which one?
-With Lisa.
*Was it hard for me?
-Did you see the writing on the wall? That you were different? Meaning, my parents divorced when I was 8 so I really really romanticised marriage. So when your relationship with Lisa started to fall apart was it very hard? Your idealism about the family, everything you believed in building the intimate family you always wanted, especially because you knew..
*I wanted children and she didn’t.
-She felt she had her kids?
*Yeah and she promised me that before we married, that would be the first thing we’d do was have children. So I was broken hearted and I walked around all the time holding these little baby dolls and I’d be crying, that’s how badly I wanted them. So I was determined to have children. It disappointed me that she wouldn’t keep her promise to me, you know?
After we got divorced she would hang out with my mother all the time. I have all these letters saying ‘I’ll give you nine children. I’ll do whatever you want’, and of course the press don’t know all these stories and she just tried for months and months and I just became too hard-hearted at that point. I closed my mind on the whole situation.
-So she thought maybe you could get back together?
*Uh huh.
