Get the latest gossip
‘Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It’ Review: Eye-Opening Look at the Organ Prodigy Who Fused with the Beatles and Helped to Forge Funk
Paris Barclay's documentary explores a maverick who fused with the Beatles, was secretly gay, but wasn't as big a 1970s star as he should have been.
The sound of a holy organ rang out, and the camera zoomed in on a stylish-looking man in a big wool cap and a Billy Dee Williams mustache, with a handsome gap-toothed grin and a gleam of reverence. As the ’70s went on, Preston put out a handful of pop-funk singles that people still remember fondly, like “Will It Go Round in Circles” and “Nothing from Nothing,” which he performed on the very first episode of “Saturday Night Live,” beaming under an Afro wig as big as his head. There’s a great book to be written, or documentary to be made, about the use of organ in pop music (“A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Green Onions,” “Let’s Go Crazy,” “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” Boston’s “Foreplay,” Blondie’s “11:59,”), and Billy Preston was the unabashed king of that instrument.
Or read this on Variety