Billy Preston is in his room on the top floor of the Americana Hotel in New York, and the cat is wasted. He flew back from Pittsburgh this morning, having been in town the day before for a show in Newark. And merely days before the Newark show, Preston had returned from session work with the Rolling Stones in Germany. It seems Jagger had called Preston to come back to the continent, a few days after he’d returned to Los Angeles from an extended European tour with the Stones. Got that? Like I said, the man is tired, but he’s ready to talk nonetheless.

“The sessions in Germany sounded good, man. We did cover versions of ‘Ain’t Too Proud to Beg’ and ‘Drift Away.’ ”

Preston had been to Germany before, but with a slightly different cast. He was backing up Little Richard in 1962, in what Little Richard thought was a gospel tour of Europe. It was at the point in Richard’s career, you might recall, of The Vision, when Richard saw the Lord cornin’ and took a sea cruise, threw his jewels overboard and gave up The Rock for religious music.

The first show of the tour was in Germany, home of the first generation Reichstag Rock, and to the Rude Rollers of Munich, Little Richard came out and sang “I Believe.” It was a traumatic

moment.

“The kids just sat on their hands,” Preston recalled. “Little Richard couldn’t stand that. He turned around, shrugged, and went back into his bag.” Awop-bop-a-loo-bop and all that. Preston said, “and that was the first time I ever played rock ’n’ roll.”

By that time (age 16) Preston was already an accomplished entertainer, but most of his work was in the gospel field. He began doodlin’ at the piano at three, and by ten was backing up Mahalia Jackson at his home church, Victory Baptist in Los Angeles. A producer from Paramount Pictures was in the audience one Sunday, and he signed Billy to play the part of W.C. Handy as a child in Birth of the Blues, which starred Nat King Cole.

That first European tour also included two acts that figured prominently in Billy’s life. The first was Sam Cooke, for whom Billy cut his first rock album, on Cooke’s Sar label. The other act was The Beatles, who were one of the opening bands on the show.

“The next time I saw The Beatles again was in 1964 when they came to America,” said Preston. “When fliey came to L.A. we went out and partied. They were very excited about the mania going on, and were just enjoying it.”

One evening Preston was playing a

club in Los Angeles when the Beatles dropped in with a television producer. Soon he becanfie a regular on the producer’s program. The show was Shindig. During his stay with the show, Preston met two more acts who were to influence his career in important ways. They were Ray Charles and the Rolling Stones.

“Ray Charles asked me to come to a recording session. I played on the Cryin' Time album, which included the single ‘Let’s Go Get Stoned.’ Then he asked me to go out on the road with him.”

Preston toured with Charles, his childhood idol, for two years before asking him a question that had been gnawing at him for years. We’ll let Billy explain.

“I used to go to school around the corner from Charles’ house, and I used to go over there and peek at him alot from across the street. One day I heard him playin’ at his piano, and 1 got up all my courage to knock on his door.” At * this point Preston breaks into an excited childhood falsetto. “1 said, ‘Oh Ray Charles, 1 love you, I love you,’ and stuff like that. Then 1 just ran off.

“It took me two years to ask him if he remembered some little guy who used to come to your house?”

“Yeah,” said Ray Charles.

“Did you know it was me?” Preston asked shyly.

Ray Charles just smiled and said

“yeah.”

Preston didn’t stay too long after that with the Charles Show. He went to England to do his own TV special when he received a call from an old friend.

“George Harrison wanted me to stop by Apple Records. I came over, and they were recording and filming Let It Be. We started reminiscing about the old days, and that’s how ‘Get Back’ got started. They asked me to take solo.”

Now do you know who “JoJo” is?

It took Preson a few days to catch on to the intensity of the internal strife the Beatles were going through. “There wasn’t much bickering in the studio, because they were concentrating on

music. Buf when we’d break for lunch, they’d start to talk about business. I was surprised to learn they’d gotten ripped off so many times. I learned alot from them about that kind of thing.”

In spite of the business hassles — this was when Allen Klein had first appeared to plant a giant foot between John and Paul — the Beatles still wanted Preston for Apple Records. Initial plans called for all of the Beatles to produce Billy, but other matters had John and Paul tied up, and Ringo wasn’t really the one to do it. George Harrison eventually produced Billy’s two Apple albums before he was granted a release from the label.

“I was watching the company make changes, and that’s one of the reasons I left. I didn’t want to be in their way,

and wanted them to be free to get themselves together. I knew they couldn’t be too concerned about me at the time.”

But Preston is optimistic about the future of The Beatles, individually and collectively. “They’re still going through alot of changes,” said Preston. “I think now they’re almost rid of Klein. I’m glad to see them doing well on their own. But I think maybe one day when they all get the business things taken care of, they’ll probably get back together again.”

After . mass exposure thanks to Shindig and Let It Be, Preston’s next jump into national prominence was the Concert for Bangladesh, organized by Harrison and starring the entire spectrum of what’s been dubbed The International Pop Music Community, ranging from Eric Clapton to Leon Russell to Bob Dylan.

“Dylan didn’t come to any of the rehearsals except the one on the day of the concert. He just came by and ran down some of his tunes.'He’s a pretty laid-back guy,” said Preston.

That about makes the circle complete for Preston. He’s toured with about every kind of band imaginable, including heavy metal bands like Uriah Heep and Grand Funk. Of those bands, he says, “I like that kind of music too. It’s got alot of energy, and besides, travellin’ with those bands is a good way to reach people.

“But this last tour with the Stones was the best I’ve ever been on as far as relationships between bands go. It was like a family — after the show we’d have" dinner, then come back to the hotel and sit around and play some more.”

On the European Stones jaunt Preston introduced his new band, the God Squad, which features a drummer and three keyboard players. Altogether, there are sixteen keyboards on the stage. “We did our set (usually 45 minutes), theri me and my drummer came out and played with the Stones. That’s 2% hours a night, or almost five hours of playing on the nights we did two shows. It takes some time after a show to unwind, so about all we could\ do was to bo back to our rooms and play until everybody slowly, but surely falls asleep.”

Can this be true? Is it possible to imagine Mick and Keith and the gang being too pooped to pop after driving the rambunctious European kids into street fightin’ frenzy? Goat’s Head Soup, which also features Preston on highlights like “Heartbreaker” and “100 Years Ago,” shows some indication that the Stones might be entering a reflective era, when it’s possible to admit that their much-vaunted decadence might have been a bit exaggerated all along. “They’ve had so many hassles,” Preston said of the Stones. “They’re trying to change that bad image. Personally, they’re nothing like what people think they are.

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“Alot of things are being written about the Stones that aren’t exactly true. So they’re sort of fighting that within themselves, and just trying to be what they are. Their heads are very together, they’ve very humble people,

and they plan to stick together for a long time to come,”

With all the session work he’s been involved with, it’s often easy to forget Preston’s own recent recording and performing career. He’s released three albums on A&M since leaving Apple: Music Is My Life, I Wrote A Simple Song and Everybody'Likes Some Kind of Music. The albums themselves have been on the erratic side for my taste; in all three cases Preston seems to try to be all things to all people, peppering the albums with some jazz, some gospel, some rock, some r&b, some blues — without ever focusing deeply enough on any one aspect of his music. From this periqd, though, have come three great singles, whose dance power can’t be denied: instrumentals like “Outa-Space” and “Space Race,” and the vocal of “Will It Go Round in Circles.”

“My career comes first,” said Preston. “When I have time for sessions, I do them. I don’t think I’ll ever stop playing sessions, though.. . too much fun...”

Preston then begins to talk about his next step,' which might well be producing other bands.' “Right now I’m most interested in talking to the Five Stairsteps, who’ve grown up and turned into really good songwriters and musicians. They’ve kinda gotten turned off to show business from being into it from the time they were real little kids.”

It’s obvious Preston’s creeping into a state of deep exhaustion, so I held back from asking him the last, and most peripheral question, which I’d promised a K-Mart check-out girl I’d ask. She was curious, it seems, about whether that magnificent mane of black hair on Preston’s head was. . . a wig.

A few days before the interview I was slipping through the bargain bin at an out-of-town K-Mart when I came across the album Wildest. Organ in Town!, a Preston instrumental from his pre-Apple days on Capitol, on which he does basic funk groove arrangements of “Satisfaction,” “Hard Day’s Night,” “Uptight” and “The In Crowd,” among others. I brought the aitium up to the check out girl, 19 year old Judy Rodriguez. She automatically began to put the album in the bag when she stopped and gasped. “What happened to Billy Preston?” she shrieked. And Preston does look goofy on the album, with a sleazy brown jacket, a thin red and black tie, and a creepy fungus haircut. “Do you think he wears a wig?” asked Judy Rodriguez.

I suggested it was an old picture, but the thought was intriguing. But there were more interesting things to talk to Preston about. Like the fact that his mother, who still sings gospel with a group called Ladies of Soul, once played Sapphire in the road show of “Amos ’n’ Andy.” Or that Mick Jagger and Mick Taylor were going to try to make it to L.A. to help finish an album with Preston, which includes a number of songs that the three have written together.

“I don’t know how to describe those tunes,” said Preston. “It’s fresh. It’s not the Stones type of thing, and it’s different for me too... it’s got a little of each of us.”

By the time the elevator descends the fifty-stories of the Americana, ducking screwdrivers the midwest conventioneers are tossing back and forth, Preston is sound asleep in his room. Sorry, Judy Rodriquez, but only his hairdresser knows for sure.