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Keyboardist Billy Preston dies
Afro-coiffed songwriter, whose renowned career included stints with both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, had been in a coma since November after years of kidney problems.
Billy Preston, whose gospel-tinged keyboard work graced recordings by music's biggest stars in the 1960s and 1970s, died today after a long battle with kidney problems that had him in a coma since last November. He was 59.
Bill Preston in
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Preston's longtime manager, Joyce Moore, told the Associated Press that Preston had been in a coma since November in a care facility and was taken to Shea Scottsdale Hospital, in Scottsdale, Arizona, Saturday after his condition deteriorated.
Preston had battled chronic kidney failure, and he received a kidney transplant in 2002. But the new kidney had failed, and he had been on dialysis ever since.
"He had a very, very beautiful last few hours and a really beautiful passing," Moore told the AP.
After touring with mentors Ray Charles and Little Richard in the early 1960s, Preston's encounter with the Beatles in Germany in the late 1960s would lead to work that pushed him to the height of his fame.
Preston became the instrumentalist with the best claim to being the "the Fifth Beatle" in the 1970s, contributing keyboard work to the Fab Four's classic album's Let It Be, The White Album, and Abbey Road. Preston played the piano solo on the song "Get Back" and performed it live with the band on its legendary "roof top" concert, the last time the Beatles played live.
Preston appeared in the film version of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and also performed at longtime friend George Harrison's charity "Concert for Bangladesh," and at the "Concert for George," a tribute to Harrison, who died of cancer in 2001.
The Rolling Stones also courted Preston, bringing him in to work on such classic albums as Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street. Preston also toured extensively with the Stones.
Preston's other session credits included Aretha Franklin's "Young, Gifted and Black," Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks," and Sly and Family Stone's "There's a Riot Goin' On."
But Preston was far from just a session musician.
The first act signed to the Beatles' Apple Records, Preston's solo career included the hit singles "Outta Space," for which he garnered the Grammy for best instrumental in 1973, as well as "Will it Go 'Round in Circles," "Nothing From Nothing," and "With You I'm Born Again," a duet with Syreeta Wright. Preston also cowrote Joe Cocker's "You Are So Beautiful."
"His legacy is so huge I don't even know where to start," Moore told the AP. "It's many genres, so many years...It's rock 'n' roll, it's soul, it's funk, it's everything. He was truly, truly, truly a genius."
Preston had fallen on extremely hard times in recent years, largely due to drug problems. In 1992, he was given a nine-month drug rehab stint for his no-contest pleas to cocaine and assault charges. Five years later, he was sentenced to three years in prison for violating probation. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to insurance fraud and agreed to testify against other defendants in an alleged scam that netted about $1 million.
Within the past year, Preston had contributed keyboard work to the 12 Songs and Stadium Arcadium, the latest albums from Neil Diamond and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, respectively.
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