{"id":10215,"date":"2026-04-14T11:14:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T11:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/billy-preston-thats-the-way-god-planned-it-reviewed-child-prodigy-fifth-beatle-restless-soul-154117\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T11:14:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T11:14:25","slug":"billy-preston-thats-the-way-god-planned-it-reviewed-child-prodigy-fifth-beatle-restless-soul-154117","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/billy-preston-thats-the-way-god-planned-it-reviewed-child-prodigy-fifth-beatle-restless-soul-154117\/","title":{"rendered":"Billy Preston, That\u2019s The Way God Planned It reviewed: child prodigy, \u2018fifth Beatle\u2019, restless soul"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There\u2019s a moment in The Beatles: Get Back documentary when the mood inside Apple Corps\u2019 Savile Row studio suddenly lifts. Into the room walks Billy Preston \u2014 broad smile, easy charm, greeting everyone with a cheerful \u201cHiya!\u201d Within minutes he\u2019s at the electric piano, locking into the groove of \u201cI Got A Feeling\u201d, and the fraught Beatles\u2019 sessions acquire a new sense of purpose. As Ringo Starr recalls, in Paris Barclay\u2019s affectionate documentary, Billy Preston: That\u2019s The Way God Planned It,<\/em> he didn\u2019t just play along \u2014 Preston lifted whatever song he was playing. \u201cHe was so great,\u201d says Starr. \u201cHe never put his hands in the wrong place.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There\u2019s a moment in The Beatles: Get Back documentary when the mood inside Apple Corps\u2019 Savile Row studio suddenly lifts. Into the room walks Billy Preston \u2014 broad smile, easy charm, greeting everyone with a cheerful \u201cHiya!\u201d Within minutes he\u2019s at the electric piano, locking into the groove of \u201cI Got A Feeling\u201d, and the fraught Beatles\u2019 sessions acquire a new sense of purpose. As Ringo Starr recalls, in Paris Barclay\u2019s affectionate documentary, Billy Preston: That\u2019s The Way God Planned It,<\/em> he didn\u2019t just play along \u2014 Preston lifted whatever song he was playing. \u201cHe was so great,\u201d says Starr. \u201cHe never put his hands in the wrong place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Preston\u2019s life was full of such moments: the gifted outsider who could transform a room simply by sitting at a keyboard. Yet the film also understands the deeper contradiction at the heart of his story. As one interviewee says, Preston \u201cwas made for showbusiness\u2026 and he was not made for showbusiness\u201d. Merry Clayton concurs: \u201cHe had that smile, but his heart would be broken.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barclay traces Preston\u2019s story back to Los Angeles, where he was raised by his mother Robbie Preston Williams, herself a singer with the Ladies of Song. Church was the centre of everything. The film shows how the Church of God in Christ became both training ground and stage. His sister Rodena ran the Voices of Deliverance choir; Preston himself directed the Church choir on television aged five. As performer Billy Porter observes here, the Black church is \u201cthe ultimate theatre\u201d.<\/p>\n

Aged seven, Preston appeared in the film St. Louis Blues alongside Mahalia Jackson and Pearl Bailey. By 13 he was guesting on The Nat King Cole Show, performing an original composition, \u201cBilly\u2019s Boogie\u201d. Even at that age he seemed to glide effortlessly between gospel devotion and showbusiness sparkle.<\/p>\n

Ray Charles becomes a lifelong mentor but the real leap into the wider world came via Little Richard. When Richard briefly attempted life as a minister, Preston joined his band, heading out on European tours while still in his mid-teens. The experience proved both exhilarating and unsettling. Richard\u2019s manager Tony Jones recalls a teenage musician suddenly exposed to the excesses of adult touring life. But it also led to Preston\u2019s first encounter with The Beatles in Hamburg.<\/p>\n

By the late \u201960s, Preston was already a seasoned session musician and collaborator, recording with figures like Sam Cooke and working alongside future funk pioneer Sly Stone. As engineer Glyn Johns remembers, Preston\u2019s arrival at The Beatles\u2019 sessions in January 1969 instantly changed the atmosphere: \u201cHe made the whole situation nine million percent better.\u201d His contribution to Let It Be and Abbey Road led Preston to became the only outside musician ever credited on a Beatles single \u2014 prompting one newspaper headline to proclaim \u201cThe fifth Beatle is a brother\u201d.<\/p>\n

From there, the doors opened wide. Preston became part of the rock aristocracy, recording and performing with George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Elton John and the Stones. His own solo career flourished, too. Instrumental smash \u201cOuta-Space\u201d topped the US charts in 1972, while albums like I Wrote A Simple Song showcased his gift for blending gospel uplift with pop accessibility. As a songwriter, his hits included \u201cYou Are So Beautiful\u201d for Joe Cocker.<\/p>\n

Touring with the Stones, Preston brought a buoyant groove to their live shows \u2014 and, as Mick Jagger fondly recalls here, an ever-changing collection of flamboyant wigs.<\/p>\n

But Barclay\u2019s film never loses sight of the tension beneath Preston\u2019s success. Fame came hand in hand with addiction and the complicated reality of being a gay man raised in a deeply religious environment. As Ray Charles Foundation president Valerie Ervin notes, the Black church long harboured many gay men even as it condemned homosexuality \u2014 a contradiction Preston struggled with throughout his life. He never recovered either from loss of his brother, when Preston was only a child.<\/p>\n

By the 1990s Preston\u2019s life had spiralled into substance abuse, legal trouble and eventual imprisonment. Bernard J Kamins \u2013 the judge who sentencing him in 1997 \u2013 admitted he feared Preston might die without intervention. In prison, however, Preston returned to the faith that had shaped him, forming a gospel choir and preaching to fellow inmates.<\/p>\n

The final act offers a fragile form of redemption. Released from jail, Preston was welcomed back onto the road by Clapton. \u201cTo be able to give him a second chance, what a privilege,\u201d he says. \u201cThere was a deep bond between me and Billy. We believed we could save one another. I thought I could help him, but I could only do what I could do.\u201d But illness soon complicated matters \u2014 dialysis dictating tour schedules \u2014 yet the music never entirely abandoned him. A performance of \u201cMy Sweet Lord\u201d at the Concert For George becomes the film\u2019s emotional peak, Preston\u2019s playing fusing gospel fervour with rock grandeur.<\/p>\n

Barclay\u2019s documentary doesn\u2019t quite resolve the contradictions of Preston\u2019s life \u2014 perhaps they were never resolvable. Instead, it honours the grace that ran through his music and personality alike. \u201cHe was a beautiful human being,\u201d says one friend near the end, \u201cand he deserved much better than he got.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post Billy Preston, That\u2019s The Way God Planned It reviewed: child prodigy, \u2018fifth Beatle\u2019, restless soul<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There\u2019s a moment in The Beatles: Get Back documentary when the mood inside Apple Corps\u2019 Savile Row studio suddenly lifts. Into the room walks Billy Preston \u2014 broad smile, easy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5871,87,88,385,1659],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-billy-preston","category-film","category-reviews","category-the-beatles","category-the-rolling-stones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}