A magnetically vibrant keyboard prodigy who played on Let It Be and worked with George Harrison, Preston later lived through years of addiction. A new film aims to find ‘the dark and the light’ in his story.
Paris Barclay's documentary explores a maverick who had hit singles, was secretly gay, and wasn't as big a 1970s star as he should have been.
Paris Barclay’s eye-opening documentary “Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It” opens with that sequence, and it’s cathartic to see it again.
“The Concert for Bangla Desh” had three highlights: Bob Dylan’s extraordinary set; the way that George Harrison, in what felt like one of the coolest things ever seen, took his exit from the stage right in the middle of the final rave-up of the song “Bangla Desh”; and Billy Preston’s performance. You watched it and thought, “Who is this man?” And also, “I must see more".
In the 1960s and 70s, Billy Preston was the musician’s musician. A self-taught prodigy who grew up playing the organ in his Los Angeles church, he was accompanying Mahalia Jackson and appearing on The Nat King Cole Show before he was 11. By high school, he was travelling with Little Richard on his European tour, standing stageside every night to watch support band the Beatles.
By 1969 he had been dubbed “the fifth Beatle” (he was co-credited on the track Get Back), and went on to be one of George Harrison’s right-hand men after the guitarist went solo. “Billy never put his hands in the wrong place,” Ringo Starr says. “He was so great.”
Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, the Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Barbara Streisand and Elton John all hired him; he put out solo records and wrote hits for others, including Joe Cocker’s You Are So Beautiful. But he struggled with addiction and was imprisoned after violent drug-related incidents. He died, aged 59, in 2006.
Now, in the documentary Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It, directed by US TV veteran Paris Barclay, friends and colleagues including Eric Clapton, Olivia Harrison (George’s widow) and the late gospel singer Sandra Crouch tell his story.
(The Guardian / Variety)
