Billy Preston Documentary is Worth the Watch
- Feb 22
- 3 min read
By Lori Perkins
I grew up surrounded by the music of this guy, and yet no one really talks about him now.
I knew Billy Preston was a talented and well-respected musician. When Peter Jackson’s Get Back featuring the recording sessions from Let It Be came out in 2023, and I saw him create with the Beatles, I did the proverbial “where is he now?” search. I learned that he was gay, and had died young-ish, so I jumped to the conclusion that hiding his gay self had contributed to his early death and being more or less left out of rock history. But it was so much more than that.
And Preston was so much more than “the fifth Beatle.”
That’s The Way God Planned It starts with Preston as a Gospel protégé, playing with the Black musical greats of the late 50’s and early 60’s, such as Ray Charles, Aretha and Little Richard, who he eventually accompanied to Hamburg, Germany when he was about 15 where he met The Beatles when they were just starting out. He got them free burgers, and they remembered him fondly.
In between Hamburg and Let It Be, Preston performed with everyone who was anyone from Barbara Streisand to Sly and the Family Stone to The Rolling Stones (7 albums) and he also co-wrote You Are So Beautiful (which is what I might have titled this doc). He also had a number of Number 1 hits of his own such as Nothing From Nothing , Will It Go Round in Circles and the very unique, psychedelic Outa-Space.
But we learned form this documentary, that he had been molested as a young boy touring and had kept everything to himself as part of the traveling religious music scene. Fame and money did not sooth him and he also found drugs and alcohol, which eventually led to his death at 59. In 2006.
Even though he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021,I sort of wondered why he seemed to have disappeared. This documentary shows us how and why.
But it also made me wonder how it got made and I was surprised that it was written, directed and produced by one man, Paris Barclay, an Emmy-award winning director and former director of the Director’s Guild of America. So then I needed to know why. I could tell this was a passion project and learned that he too had been a child star in the Gospel music circuit who had been abused, and was gay, turned to drugs and alcohol, but changed his life. He saw parallels to his own life in Preston’s life.
Barclay wrote, “I read Daniel Shaw’s book proposal [and] I understood how profoundly I connected to his story. The parallels were unmistakable: we were both raised in the church as young musicians, both lost brothers at an early age that had a lasting impact, both confronted early messages that condemned who we were, and both carried the confusion and isolation that followed.
I wanted to make this film because Billy Preston’s life is not only musically significant but emotionally urgent. His genius influenced some of the greatest artists of our time, yet his private struggles remained largely unseen. This project allowed me to illuminate both —to examine the relationship between artistic brilliance and personal pain, and to give full dimension to a musician whose legacy deserves deeper recognition.”
I don’t know how long Barclay wanted to make this film, but I am so glad he did!
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