Aside from having his mother’s eyes, Navarone Garibaldi Garcia is unmistakably the son of Elvis Presley’s ex-wife, actress Priscilla Presley.
“A lot of people are aware of me,” the musician tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue, which hits newsstands on Friday. “But they don’t know who I am.”
Though he grew up mostly out of the spotlight, Navarone, 35, says his ancestors loomed over him.
“I got in more trouble than anyone else because kids’ parents found out who my mom was and wanted a reason to talk to her,” he says. “It didn’t sit well with me.”
On Jan. 22, he was thrust back into the spotlight when he attended a memorial service at Graceland for his half-sister Lisa Marie Presley. Lisa Marie, Elvis and Priscilla’s only daughter, died suddenly of apparent cardiac arrest on Jan. 12 at the age of 54.
“It’s still surreal,” Navarone says of the loss, another dark blip in a life filled with ups and downs.
With the release of his new song “Acid Plane” with his band Them Guns on Friday, Navarone is finally ready to tell the world his story, which includes his life with his famous mother, his recovery from fentanyl addiction, and learning the truth about his father, producer Marco Garibaldi.
The story of Navarone begins in the early 1980s, when Priscilla met Garibaldi through mutual friends. Priscilla received a call from one of Garibaldi’s ex-wives a few months after the birth of Navarone, their only child together, in 1987, warning her that “he’s not who you think he is,” Navarone says. “My mother basically told me, ‘Don’t call here again,’ because she didn’t know what to do with that information.” Priscilla stuck to her routine, which included not playing Elvis’ music.
There is music playing throughout the house.
“I think my father had a bit of a problem with it,” Navarone says. “It wasn’t until after he left that my mother began freely playing his music again.”
After 20 years together, Priscilla and Garibaldi divorced in 2006; they never married. It wasn’t until the divorce that Navarone became close to his father.
“The disciplinarian role didn’t work for us, but the friend role did,” he remembers. “He was looking for someone to go out drinking with.”
At the age of 18, Navarone moved nearly six hours away from his family in Los Angeles to Santa Cruz, where he later formed Them Guns.
“It was a way out,” he says. “It was a new beginning. Santa Cruz is a portal that draws you in.”
His bubble burst in 2008, when a National Enquirer reporter discovered that he was growing marijuana at home.
“It made the front page,” he says. “Everyone recognised my family once more.”
Navarone, who had been in another band as a teen, returned to Los Angeles in 2012 to pursue music with Them Guns.
“‘OK, I’m going into the family business,’ I thought. I’ll write a song, and then we’ll go on tour.’ “he claims. “I had no idea it took so much more than that.”
While he acknowledges his mother’s assistance and connections, he claims it’s a “misconception that I was raised extravagantly with Elvis’ estate and money… That wasn’t the case.”
While Navarone’s half-sister Lisa Marie debuted in the music industry with her debut album in 2003, the two were not close in the years leading up to her death.
In 2017, Navarone’s life was turned upside down when he discovered some previously unknown facts about his father, whom he had assumed was from a wealthy Italian family.
After contacting a teenager from Brazil who claimed to be his “cousin,” Navarone discovered that his father had immigrated to the United States from Brazil, not Italy, and had changed his last name from Garcia to Garibaldi after being told he’d never make it in Hollywood with a Hispanic last name.
When Navarone confronted his father, Garibaldi allegedly told him, “Lose my number.” That was their last conversation.
Navarone flew to Brazil two weeks after learning about his extended family.
“I lost one family member, but gained more than 20,” he says. “I have absolutely no regrets.”
However, due to another secret, he was forced to cut his trip short.
“My family there had no idea I had a drug problem, and I was too embarrassed to tell them,” he explains. “I promised not to return until my problem was resolved.”
Navarone’s drug problem began in his adolescence, when he began using heroin. He became addicted to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin.heroin, and 100 times more potent than morphine.
“I thought I was doing heroin, but it turned out to be fentanyl,” he explains. “That was a completely different beast. I became so dependent on it that I needed it every 45 minutes.”
He quit using hard drugs and opioids in 2020, partly to visit his now-wife Elisa (whom he married in 2022) in her native Switzerland.
“When COVID occurred, I wanted to go there and spend more than three or four days with her. I didn’t want to carry a pound of fentanyl with me everywhere I went “he claims. “I gritted my teeth and said, ‘Let’s see how bad this can get.'”
He then spent a month detoxing at his mother’s house.
“I was pretty much in my bed in the foetal position all day,” Navarone says, adding that he still smokes marijuana and drinks alcohol. “It almost feels like a different lifetime. The entire world improved [as a result].”
Kyle Hamood, a bandmate, observes: “It’s a world of difference. It’s as if we’ve resurrected the old Navarone.”
After Lisa Marie’s death, which occurred two years after Priscilla’s grandson Benjamin died by suicide at the age of 27, Navarone says it’s his turn to support Priscilla. Despite his mother’s petition to challenge an amendment to Lisa Marie’s will that names her two oldest children, Riley, 33, and Benjamin, as sole trustees of her estate, Navarone says he has a close relationship with his oldest niece.
Priscilla
“Riley has been so good with the twins,” he says, referring to Lisa Marie’s 14-year-old daughters with ex-husband Michael Lockwood, Finley and Harper.
Navarone intends to take his mother to Brazil later this year.
“She was there back in the ’80s, but I think she needs to be reminded of how nice it is,” he says. “I’d like to live there someday.”
He also hopes to go on an international tour with Them Guns and establish himself as a successful musician.
“There were times when I didn’t think I’d make it here,” he admits. “I’m extremely proud of how far I’ve come.”