The Untold Story of Billy Preston: Documentary Explores the Musician’s Life and Legacy

From the beginning, Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned Itthe first documentary about the late pop and R&B singer, composer and organ master, makes clear that few communicated as much carefree joy on stage as Billy Preston. In the opening scene, from the Bangladesh Concerto by George Harrison in 1971, Preston begins singing the warm gospel song that gives the film its name. Overpowered by the music, he leaves his place behind the keyboard and commands the stage with dance moves he learned in church – elevating the music, the show, and himself.

Throughout the documentary, directed by Paris BarclayPreston is shown showing off his big, smiling gap between his teeth as he works the electric piano part in Don’t Let Me Down of the Beatlesdances on stage with Mick Jagger when he went on tour with Rolling Stones and plays the glittering piano with Joe Cocker and Patti LaBelle during a duet You Are So Beautifulwhich Preston co-wrote before Cocker made the song his own. Every second of these and other performance clips in the documentary communicate how Preston sought happiness through music, even when he played the main character in the failed film version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

To quote Smokey Robinsonyou can only see the ”tears of a clown” when there is no one around. But in Preston’s case, That’s the Way God Planned It suggests that the subject was holding a great deal of emotion. The film is a portrait of a talented musician who deserves to be remembered for more than just his appearances on albums by Beatles and of Stones or your own lush songs, like Will It Go Round in Circles and the elastic jump of Outa-Space. But it’s also a portrait of someone who, out of trauma or fear of industry repercussions, kept much of her personal life secret, so much so that what came next – addictions, scandalous accusations and prison time – feels like an explosion of anger and frustration. .

Preston, a child prodigy, was introduced to church and gospel music by his mother. Before he was even a teenager, he had mastered the Hammond B3 organ and landed TV appearances, including one with Nat “King” Colewhich is shown in the film. He went on tour with Little Richardwas enchanted by Ray Charles and made several instrumental albums. The film argues that he influenced Sly Stone deeply, which seems exaggerated until you hear the Preston-Stone collaboration Advice on Preston’s 1966 album, Wildest Organ in Town. Your friendship with Beatleswhich began with meeting them in Hamburg, Germany, when they opened for Little Richard (Preston was in the band), led to his work on the album that became Let It Be and their own contract with their Apple record label. (Luckily, he had already abandoned his own version of a mop-top style by that time.)

In the early Seventies, Preston was essentially relaunched as a showman complete with voluminous wigs, hit singles (also Nothing From Nothing) and stage and studio appearances with the cream of classic rock. As we see, he helped to liven up the troubled solo tour of Harrison in 1974 and was the first musical guest of Saturday Night Live. He seemed to have everything, including the respect of his colleagues: Jagger remembers jokes about Preston’s wigs, and Eric Clapton incisively mentions how a Preston solo could immediately divert attention from the main names.

He stole the recording without you even noticing,” he says.

Although his own records were not on the same level as those of Stevie Wonder or it wasn’t P-Funk George Clinton from the same period, some of them, such as I Wrote a Simple Song from 1971, deserve a second look for the way they blended gospel, Clavinet-driven funk and upbeat R&B.

Throughout this period, Preston was never publicly less than optimistic. But the more we learn about him, the more it seems like he was wearing a very well-crafted mask. The damage began at a young age. He grew up without a father, who appears to have abandoned Preston at an early age, and young Preston, a friend recalls, was “taken advantage of” when he was on the road with older musicians on gospel tours. But he rarely, if ever, spoke about it with any of the friends, relatives or colleagues seen in the film, who are said to have assumed he was gay (or in relationships with both men and women for a time), although Preston never has declared himself.

One of its long-time members says he was surprised to discover that You Are So Beautiful was supposedly written about Preston’s mother, not a lover. “He hid a lot of things from us,” adds another friend in a sentiment we’ve heard repeatedly throughout That’s the Way God Planned It.

What went wrong? As the film reminds us, a series of dubious career choices, like this role in the cinematic disaster that was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. (Preston, who played Pepper himself, is seen in costume, singing that stage version of Get Back.) When his pleasant funk style went out of fashion, he was rejected by Black radio even after an ill-fated attempt at record. Everyone involved admits that an alleged relationship with Syreeta Wright – the former partner and collaborator of Stevie Wonder and Preston’s duet partner on his latest big hit, the brilliant ballad With You I’m Born Again — was a way to make him appear heterosexual.

Probably due to these career problems, Preston began to lower his mask. The film details his subsequent crack addiction and the time he trashed a New York hotel room (rare for him). Soon, he was broke and something of a business outcast, asking to be paid for a session with a bundle of cocaine. Without sensationalism, Barclay documents how Preston spent nine months in rehab in 1992 after pleading not guilty to possession of coke and sexual assault involving a teenager and pornography.

After violating his probation several times, he was finally sentenced to three years in prison and also pleaded guilty to insurance fraud. After his arrest, Preston partially returned to what he did before, recording with his Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cashand Neil Diamond. But the deaths of his mother and his mentor Ray Charles they affected him deeply, and he relapsed into crack again; with a clearly heavy heart, Clapton talks about waiting for his friend to give him the sign that he wanted to clean up – a sign that never came.

That’s the Way God Planned It (which premiered at the DOC NYC festival last weekend and will be shown at the Palm Springs Film Festival) doesn’t shy away from Preston’s darker side and his death, from kidney failure in 2009 at age 59, seems inevitable in light of that we know now. But given his public persona, Preston’s decline was, and continues to be, shocking. In the film, the writer David Ritz explains how a planned Preston memoir never materialized, as Preston simply didn’t want to talk about his private side. In life and in his own documentary, Preston remains a mystery.

This article was translated and adapted from Rolling Stone USA. Read the original version here.