And so it goes…perhaps the hardest part of aging is watching those you idolize pass away. As a garage band keyboard player in the late sixties and early seventies there was only one guy for me; Billy Preston. Billy Preston died at age 59 of kidney failure; the result of a rejected kidney and heart infection leaving him comatose. It really doesn’t matter how Billy Preston died; he’s gone…that matters.
Most people who knew of Billy Preston were introduced to him by his solo work in the early seventies. “Nothing from Nothing” (Leaves Nothing) and “Will It Go Round in a Circle”. While he was singing, you knew he was grinning, in fact every picture I ever saw of him he was smiling; Billy Preston loved the keyboard and so did I; I also admired Billy Preston.
Those of us who would have sold everything up to and in some cases including our souls to play like Billy Preston, knew where he’d come from.
He had sat in with the Beatles, particularly close to George Harrison and not only brought peace to the group but riffs that blew us all away; like “Get Back”. A lot of people were called the “Fifth Beatle”; perhaps Billy Preston was. His talents weren’t limited to The Beatles; however, he played with the Rolling Stones.
Perhaps one of his greatest accomplishments, and maybe the one people would least expect from a rocker like Preston was the fact he wrote the song “You Are So Beautiful to Me” recorded by Joe Cocker. The song has become a standard
Before he was a music icon, Billy Preston was a child and teen prodigy on the organ and piano at church; a place where a lot of Black musicians got their training, especially before the early seventies. Further, it isn’t surprising that Billy Preston, like Jimi Hendrix, was known to British fans before American fans simply by virtue of where music and race were at during that time
If you love Billy Preston like I do, you don’t remember him with a long, somber and sad verbal dirge; you remember like he was. He was a man that took an ordinary song and by adding a little salt and pepper took it from good to great; most people wouldn’t even know he was on the record.
I remember back in 1972 picking up my wife of 40 years who had a beautiful smile of her own while “Nothing from Nothing” was playing. That song made me happy.
Billy Preston made a lot of people happy. Sadly, a lot of them only knew the music; not who played the music.
I think Billy Preston is still grinning. He came to earth to do what he was meant to do. Billy Preston is dead at age 59. It was way too early for such a talent to leave…and so it goes.