Who is Navarone Garcia? The half-brother of Lisa Marie Presley gives rare interview about his famous family
Navarone Garcia, Lisa Marie Presley’s half-brother, gives a rare interview about his famous family. He and his sister were not close in the years leading up to his death, the article notes. (Photo: Getty Images)
Navarone Garcia, Lisa Marie Presley’s half-brother, speaks after her death.
The 35-year-old musician, who is the son of Priscilla Presley and producer Marco Garibaldi, shared some insight into his upbringing in the famous family. He attended his singer-songwriter sister’s memorial service at Graceland on January 22.
“A lot of people know me,” Garcia, who is part of Them Guns, told People. “But they don’t know me.”
Garcia said he grew up largely out of the spotlight — his mother was long divorced from music legend Elvis Presley and he didn’t have the famous Presley surname — but whenever people found out who was his mother, they were always trying to meet her, who he “wasn’t very comfortable with”.
Lisa Marie Presley, Priscilla Presley and Navarone attend a 2011 event where Priscilla was honored. (Photo: David Becker/WireImage)
Her parents met in the 1980s and were together for 20 years but never married. He later learned that Garibaldi, who claimed to be from Italy, was actually from Brazil and secretly changed his last name from Garcia after learning he would never go to Hollywood with a Hispanic last name. When Garcia confronted his dad about his falsity on his background, they definitely drifted apart. Garcia then adopted her father’s real last name.
Garcia has sometimes moved away from his family, he said, including moving six hours from where he grew up in Los Angeles to Santa Cruz, Calif. , and it ended up making headlines in 2008.
“Everyone knew who my family was again,” said Garcia, who did not cite any ties to Scientology, the controversial group of which Priscilla has long been a member. Lisa Marie would have cut ties with the organization.
Garcia — like Lisa Marie, who disclosed an opioid addiction in 2019 — also struggled with drug addiction. He said he started using heroin as a teenager and later became addicted to fentanyl.
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“I got so addicted I needed it every 45 minutes,” he admitted, noting that he got sober for good from hard drugs and opioids in 2020. (He still smokes marijuana and drinks alcohol.) “There were times when I didn’t think I would make it here.” He did a month-long rehab with Priscilla, saying he “was pretty much in my bed in the fetal position all day. It’s like a different life, almost. The whole world got a lot improved [afterward].” Garcia, who married longtime love Elisa Achilli in 2022, said it was her turn to support her mother after Lisa Marie’s death.
Lisa Marie Presley and her brother Navarone attended the Lilo & Stitch premiere together in 2002. The half-siblings had an age gap of nearly 20 years. (Photo: Kevin Winter/ImageDirect)
His own relationship with Lisa Marie was complicated. She was 20 years older than him and they did not grow up together. Less than a year after her birth, she married her first husband, Danny Keough, and the newlyweds started their own family a year later. Garcia admitted he wasn’t close to his final years – something echoed in a tribute after his death when he wrote, in part, “I know the past two years haven’t been easy for you, and I wish things were different between us.”
“It’s still surreal,” Garcia said of Lisa Marie’s death at 54, without delving into their complications.
He said he was close to Lisa Marie’s eldest daughter, Riley Keough, 33, and said she “was so good with the twins”, referring to Lisa Marie’s 14-year-old daughters, Finley and Harper, 14, with ex-husband Michael Lockwood. (Lisa Marie’s son, Benjamin Keough, died by suicide in 2020 at age 27.)
Lisa Marie died on January 12 after suffering cardiac arrest at her home in Calabasas, California. Garcia’s tribute to his brother, involving troubled tension between them in recent years, has not gone unnoticed.
Priscilla led the tributes at Lisa Marie’s memorial at Graceland, reading a poem written by the twins – and Garcia attended the celebration of life, which was streamed online.
Then, in a surprise move, Priscilla filed papers last Thursday seeking control of Lisa Marie’s estate. She disputes the authenticity of a 2016 amendment apparently made by Lisa Marie that removed Priscilla as trustee and replaced her with her adult children, Riley and Benjamin. Riley, as the only adult child, would retain the role.
A source close to Lisa Marie told Page Six that Priscilla’s move was “strictly a cash grab.” The unidentified person claimed that Lisa Marie “had no relationship with Priscilla, Michael Lockwood or his half-brother [Garcia].”
While there has been other gossip surrounding Lisa Marie’s death — including a TMZ report with unverified claims from “family sources” claiming Lisa Marie was using opioids again — her cause of death currently remains. unknown pending further testing by the Los Angeles County coroner.