Joe Cocker – You Are So Beautiful (Live in Berlin)

“You Are So Beautiful” – Single by Joe Cocker from the album I Can Stand a Little Rain
B-side “It’s a Sin When You Love Somebody”
Released November 2, 1974
Recorded 1973
Label A&M
Songwriters Billy Preston, Bruce Fisher
Producer Jim Price
Charted no.5 in US; No.4 in Canada; No.32 in Australia

Video recorded on Metropol, Berlin, West Germany on October 30, 1980.
The Band
Lead Guitar – Cliff Goodwin
Bass – Howard Hersh
Keyboards – Larry Marshall
Piano,Arranger – Mitch Chakour
Drums – B.J. Wilson
Vocals – Maxine Greene
Vocals – Ann Lang
Vocals – D.E. Washburne

Billy Preston wrote “You Are So Beautiful” with one of his regular collaborators, Bruce Fisher. Preston’s inspiration was his mother, who worked as a stage actress. According to his friend Sam Moore (who had assumed it was a standard love song), Preston was appalled to learn that Moore was using the song as a means to attract young women each time he sang it in concert. In Moore’s description, Preston told him: “That song’s about my mother!” The composition interpolates part of Preston’s 1969 song “Let Us All Get Together (Right Now)”, which he wrote with soul singer Doris Troy.

Legend surrounding “You are So Beautiful” claims that Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys helped Preston complete it. Wilson received no songwriting credits but he sang this song for many years at Beach Boys concerts.

Cocker sang this at Billy Preston’s funeral in 2006.

This is one of the most-recognized songs in America, but it didn’t crack the chart in Joe Cocker’s native UK.