A documentary about the late keyboard player Billy Preston — perhaps best known for being the only guest musician ever credited on a Beatles record — will screen at DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary film festival, on Nov. 17
Titled That’s the Way God Planned It, after Preston’s 1969 solo hit of the same name, the film features interviews with Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and George Harrison‘s widow, Olivia, as well as rare footage. It focuses on Preston’s genre-spanning work with Aretha Franklin, The Rolling Stones, Elton John and more, as well as his struggle to come to terms with his sexuality and his substance abuse.
If you watched the Beatles’ Get Back documentary, you saw Preston jamming in the studio with the Fab Four and playing with them during their final live performance on the rooftop of Apple Records in London in January 1969. The single “Get Back” was credited to “The Beatles featuring Billy Preston.”
Following the rooftop concert, Preston was signed to The Beatles’ Apple Records and scored a hit with “That’s the Way God Planned It.” In his years after leaving the label in 1971, he recorded the hits “Will It Go Round in Circles,” “Outa-Space,” “Nothing from Nothing” and “With You I’m Born Again.”
Preston also co-wrote Joe Cocker‘s classic “You Are So Beautiful,” recorded and toured with George Harrison and The Rolling Stones, and was the first-ever musical guest on Saturday Night Live, among his many other accomplishments. He died in June 2006 after a bout of pericarditis in 2005 caused respiratory failure, which left him comatose.
Preston was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.
The screening of the doc at the festival will include a Q&A with director Paris Barclay.
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