Billy Preston, the splashy, gospel-rooted keyboardist whose career included No. 1 solo hits and work with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, died Tuesday in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 59.
He died after having been in a coma since November, his manager, Joyce Moore, told The Associated Press. He suffered from kidney failure.
Mr. Preston had an extensive career as a sideman, working with musicians from Little Richard to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. His own hits, including the Grammy-winning instrumental “Outa-Space” in 1972 and the No. 1 pop hits “Will It Go Round in Circles” (1973) and “Nothing from Nothing” (1974), each sold a million singles. He also wrote (with Bruce Fisher) the perennial torch song “You Are So Beautiful.”
But his best-known performance was the afternoon he spent on a London rooftop with the Beatles in what was their last concert, which was filmed for “Let It Be.” In a 2001 interview, he recalled, “They made me feel like a member of the band.”
William Everett Preston began taking piano lessons when he was 3 years old and he accompanied the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson when he was 10.
In 1958 he played the young W.C. Handy in the film biography “St. Louis Blues.” Little Richard hired Mr. Preston for a European tour in 1962, and during that tour he met the fledgling Beatles–who were Little Richard’s opening act.
He worked in the house band of the pop music television show “Shindig” and then joined Ray Charles’ band for three years. George Harrison of the Beatles saw him with Charles’ band and brought him to work with the Beatles.
Mr. Preston was signed to the Beatles’ label, Apple, and made two albums produced by Harrison: “That’s the Way God Planned It” and “Encouraging Words.” He was invited to join the recording sessions that yielded “Let It Be” and “Abbey Road,” where he helped hold together an increasingly divided band.
“It was a struggle for them,” Mr. Preston said in 2001. “They were kind of despondent. They had lost the joy of doing it all.”
The Beatles’ 1969 single of “Get Back” is credited to “The Beatles With Billy Preston.”
Mr. Preston appeared at the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh that Harrison organized and did studio work on solo projects by Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr.
Mr. Preston’s own career flourished in the early 1970s, when he had his major hits: synthesizer-topped instrumentals (“Outa-Space” and “Space Race”) and jaunty soul songs (“Will It Go Round in Circles” and “Nothing from Nothing”). He worked in the studio with the Rolling Stones on their 1970s albums, among them “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Main Street,” and toured with them.
He also was a studio musician on Sly and the Family Stone’s “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” and on Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks,” and he collaborated with Quincy Jones on the score for the Sidney Poitier film “They Call Me Mister Tibbs.”
Mr. Preston was the musical guest on the first “Saturday Night Live,” broadcast on NBC in 1975. He appeared in the 1978 Beatles-inspired film “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” as Sgt. Pepper.
He continued working as a studio sideman and making solo albums through the 1980s, and he toured with Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band in 1989. But a longtime drug problem caught up with him in 1992, when he pleaded no contest to charges of assault and cocaine possession and spent nine months at a drug rehabilitation center.
In 1997 he was sentenced to 3 years in prison for violating probation and in 1998 he pleaded guilty to insurance fraud.
After Mr. Preston was released from prison, he was welcomed as a musician. He appeared in the movie “The Blues Brothers 2000” and performed at the 2002 Concert for George, a tribute organized by Eric Clapton a year after Harrison’s death.
He made a tribute album, “Billy Preston’s Beatles Salute,” in 2004, and he performed on the season finale of “American Idol” in 2005.
