‘I just had to rejoice’: the brilliance and tragedy of ‘fifth Beatle’ Billy Preston

A magnetically vibrant keyboard prodigy who played on Let It Be and worked with George Harrison, Preston later lived through years of addiction. A new film aims to find ‘the dark and the light’ in his story

In the 1960s and 70s, Billy Preston was the musician’s musician. A self-taught prodigy who grew up playing the organ in his Los Angeles church, he was accompanying Mahalia Jackson and appearing on The Nat King Cole Show before he was 11. By high school, he was travelling with Little Richard on his European tour, standing stageside every night to watch support band the Beatles.

By 1969 he had been dubbed “the fifth Beatle” (he was co-credited on the track Get Back), and went on to be one of George Harrison’s right-hand men after the guitarist went solo. “Billy never put his hands in the wrong place,” Ringo Starr says. “He was so great.”

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‘I just had to rejoice’: the brilliance and tragedy of ‘fifth Beatle’ Billy Preston

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