Billy Preston

• 1. Introduction

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  Billy Preston was the only artist to receive a co-performer credit on a Beatles recording after the band began recording as independent artists. The 1969 single "Get Back" bore the label "The Beatles with Billy Preston" not as a courtesy but as an honest account of what happened in the studio: his electric piano is prominent throughout, and he plays an extended solo. That credit was the Beatles' own decision, a gesture that tells you everything about how musicians felt when Preston walked into a room.

  He was ten years old when he first played organ onstage backing gospel singers. By the time he was a teenager, he had appeared on a nationally broadcast television show, acted in a film, and released his debut album. Long before the Beatles came calling, Preston had already played with Mahalia Jackson, Nat King Cole, Little Richard, Sam Cooke, and Ray Charles. What drove him to such heights, and what made his later decades so turbulent, are questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. A Child Prodigy

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  William Everett Preston was born on the 2nd of September, 1946, in Houston, and moved to Los Angeles as a child with his mother, Robbie Lee Williams. He was self-taught, never having had a music lesson. By the age of ten, he was playing organ onstage backing gospel singers such as Mahalia Jackson.

  At eleven, Preston appeared on Nat King Cole's NBC television show, singing the Fats Domino hit "Blueberry Hill" alongside Cole. He also appeared in the 1958 W. C. Handy biopic St. Louis Blues, starring Cole, playing Handy at a younger age. In 1960, he became a pianist for Andrae Crouch with the Church of God in Christ Singers, a group that first recorded the gospel hit "The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power".

  In 1962, Preston joined Little Richard's band as organist. While performing in Hamburg that year, he met the Beatles, a meeting that would shape the rest of his career. In 1963, he played organ on Sam Cooke's Night Beat album and released his debut album, 16 Yr. Old Soul, for Cooke's SAR label. In May or June 1965, while still in his teens, he shared a session in New York City with Little Richard and Jimi Hendrix that produced the soul classic "I Don't Know What You've Got".

• 3. The Fifth Beatle

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  In January 1969, Preston joined the Get Back sessions after reuniting with the band he had first met in Hamburg seven years earlier. John Lennon at one point proposed that Preston join the Beatles outright; Paul McCartney replied that it was difficult enough reaching agreements among four people. The suggestion was never acted upon, but Preston's presence in those sessions was deep enough that the band credited him by name on their single.

  Preston played organ and electric piano across several of the Get Back sessions. Footage of the collaboration was captured in the 2021 Peter Jackson documentary The Beatles: Get Back. He accompanied the band on electric piano for their rooftop concert in London, which turned out to be the group's final public appearance. The credit on "Get Back" in April 1969 was, according to the source, the only time an artist was named as a co-performer with the Beatles after the band had started recording as independent artists.

  His work with the group was not limited to Get Back. On the 1969 Abbey Road album, Preston contributed organ to "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" and "Something". In 1978, he appeared as Sgt. Pepper in Robert Stigwood's film Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, performing "Get Back" as the penultimate song.

• 4. Solo Peaks and Rolling Stone Years

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  Signed to the Beatles' Apple label, Preston released the album That's the Way God Planned It in 1969, produced by George Harrison. The title song was a hit single in Britain. Preston was then the first artist to record Harrison's subsequent international hit "My Sweet Lord", placing it on his 1970 album Encouraging Words, which Harrison co-produced with him.

  In 1971, Preston left Apple and signed with Herb Alpert's A&M Records. The year before, Stephen Stills had asked to use Preston's phrase "if you can't be with the one you love" for a song on Stills's self-titled debut album. Following the release of I Wrote a Simple Song on A&M, Preston's solo career reached its commercial height. His 1972 instrumental "Outa-Space" reached number 2 on the US Billboard Hot 100, topped Billboard's R&B chart, and won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance at the 15th Annual Grammy Awards in 1973. It sold over one million copies in America and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA in June 1972. The song also helped popularize the sound of the clavinet in funk music.

  Over the next two years he released the chart-topping singles "Will It Go Round in Circles" and "Nothing from Nothing", and the number 4 hit "Space Race". "Will It Go Round in Circles" displaced Harrison's "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)" at the top on the 7th of July, 1973. Each of those three singles sold in excess of one million copies. American Bandstand host Dick Clark admired "Space Race" so much that he used the instrumental for the mid-show break for virtually the remainder of the program's run.

  From 1970, Preston played keyboards for the Rolling Stones on their albums Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main St., Goats Head Soup, It's Only Rock 'n Roll, and Black and Blue. As their primary touring keyboardist from 1973 to 1977, he performed as a support act with his own band on their 1973 European tour, a performance documented on the album Live European Tour 1973. On the 11th of October, 1975, he was the first musical guest on the series premiere of Saturday Night Live. In 1974, along with his regular songwriting collaborator Bruce Fisher, he composed "You Are So Beautiful", which became one of Joe Cocker's biggest hits. The Stones and Preston parted ways in 1977, mainly over a disagreement about money.

• 5. Faith, Loss, and Addiction

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  Preston was raised in the African-American gospel tradition and was a committed Christian throughout his life. His religious faith was openly expressed in works such as his hit "That's the Way God Planned It", and he was apparently willing to set those convictions aside when working on tracks like John Lennon's openly atheistic song "God". He was deeply attached to his mother, Robbie Lee Williams, for whom he wrote the song that became his best-known composition, "You Are So Beautiful".

  A traumatic incident in the early 1970s altered the course of Preston's personal life. He had been engaged to actress and model Kathy Silva. He was also close friends with musician Sly Stone, and had contributed extensively to Stone's recordings, including the album There's a Riot Goin' On. According to Preston's manager Joyce Moore, Preston was devastated when he came home one day to find Stone in bed with Silva, who later married Stone on stage at Madison Square Garden. Moore has stated that this event led Preston to stop having relationships with women, and that his subsequent cocaine use was his way of coping with the internal conflicts he felt about his sexual identity.

  Preston checked into a drug rehabilitation program in 1991. While on probation for a drunk driving conviction in August of that year, he was arrested on charges that included assault. He entered no-contest pleas to cocaine and assault charges. He was sentenced to nine months at a drug rehabilitation center and three months of house arrest. In 1997, he received a three-year sentence in a California prison for cocaine possession in violation of his probation. While at Avenal State Prison, he led a chorus and performed at church services. He served 18 months of his four-year sentence, after which he apparently became drug-free.

  Although his homosexuality became known to associates in the music world, including Keith Richards (who mentioned it in his 2010 autobiography Life), Preston did not publicly come out until shortly before his death, partly because he felt it conflicted with his religious beliefs and his lifelong ties to the church.

• 6. Later Work and Final Years

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  Preston's career lost momentum through the 1980s. He left Motown in 1984 and returned to session work, contributing organ solos to Luther Vandross's 1985 hit "Til My Baby Comes Home", and working with Whitney Houston and Patti LaBelle, among others. He served as musical director for Nightlife, a late-night talk show hosted by David Brenner that ran one season from 1986 to 1987.

  In 2002, Preston appeared on the Johnny Cash album American IV: The Man Comes Around, playing piano on "Personal Jesus" and "Tear-Stained Letter". He was invited to become a member of The Band in 1991, after the death of pianist Stan Szelest, but the sentencing from his cocaine and assault charges ended that collaboration.

  On the 29th of November, 2001, while touring and managing his own health problems, Preston received word that George Harrison had died after a long illness. At the 2002 Concert for George at Royal Albert Hall in London, Preston's performance of "My Sweet Lord" received critical acclaim. He also sang "Isn't It a Pity" and played the Hammond organ for the show.

  In 2004, Preston performed as a jazz organist on Ray Charles's album Genius Loves Company, playing on "Here We Go Again" alongside Charles and Norah Jones. In March 2005, he appeared on the American Idol fourth-season finale, performing "With You I'm Born Again" with contestant Vonzell Solomon. Although very ill by late 2005, Preston played clavinet on "Warlocks" for the Red Hot Chili Peppers album Stadium Arcadium after jumping out of bed upon hearing a tape of the song the band had given him.

  In late 2005, Preston made his last public performance in Los Angeles, playing a set of three Harrison songs with Dhani Harrison and Ringo Starr joining on guitar and drums for the final song. Preston had suffered kidney disease brought on by hypertension, received a kidney transplant in 2002, and fell into a coma on the 21st of November, 2005. He died on the 6th of June, 2006, in Scottsdale, Arizona. His funeral, held on the 21st of June, 2006, lasted almost three hours and included performances by Joe Cocker, the Temptations' lead vocalist Ali Woodson, and singer Merry Clayton, while letters from Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, and Eric Clapton were read aloud.

• 7. Legacy

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  Miles Davis honored Preston during his lifetime: the 1974 album Get Up with It includes a track titled "Billy Preston". Ringo Starr, speaking at rehearsals for the Concert for George in 2002, called Preston one of the greatest Hammond organ players of all time, and added, "Billy never put his hands in the wrong place. Never."

  Rick Wakeman, the former Yes keyboardist, said in his introduction to a 2010 BBC Radio program on Preston's life: "Every keyboard player I know loves Billy Preston. You can spot his playing a mile off, whether it's the Hammond organ, the Fender Rhodes or the piano. He had such a spiritual touch to his technique; it made him completely unique."

  Preston was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021 with the Musical Excellence Award. In 2024, Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph ranked Preston as the fourth greatest keyboard player of all time, calling him "the ultimate RnB keyboard player". Jon Batiste plays Preston in the 2024 film Saturday Night. A documentary on his life, titled Billy Preston: That's the Way God Planned It and directed by Paris Barclay, was released in select North American markets in 2026.