BEHIND THE SCENES A musing beginning for Moyers’ ‘Amazing Grace’ By Frank Lovece It’s like this: You’re on a transcontinental flight from London to New York, having just covered the Reykjavik summit meeting between the U.S. president and the Soviet premier. So what kinds of things go through your mind? Bill Moyers “I wrote in my notebook,” recalls Bill Moyers, “* ‘Amaz- ing Grace’: Who wrote and why?” The much-respected journalist “was just sitting there tired and passive and in a somewhat suspended state, and the words of that song started floating through my mind, as they have so often.” He actually did know who wrote it - a British slave-ship captain named John Newton - “‘and my mind flashed on all the blacks I’ve seen and heard of singing it. I saw the irony.” Irony enough, as it hap- pens, for him to produce and host “Amazing Grace With Bill Moyers,” an 80-minute documentary on, and cele- bration of, the hymn record- ed more often than any oth- er. Johnny Cash, Judy Collins and Jessye Norman are among the singers who have recorded it, and they are featured on the show, which airs Wednesday, Sept. 12, on PBS. (Check lo- cal listings.) “Growing up in East Tex- as,’ Moyers remembers, ‘‘I became familiar with the fact that here was a song black Christians and white Christians shared in com- mon. It has the same effect on blacks and whites — al- though when they sing it in segregated circles, they have no way of knowing the other is experiencing it with the same powerful emo- tions.”” Moyers knows what he’s talking about: At a Har- lem Boys Choir _ benefit screening, a packed house of all races applauded and cheered. The multiple Emmy Award-winning Moyers is currently on the PBS side of his broadcast career. He was with PBS from 1971-76, CBS the next three years, PBS the next two, CBS the next five and PBS again since 1987. He was formerly Pres- ident Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam-plagued press sec- retary and then publisher of Newsday. Despite all this, “I have had some dull moments,” the 56-year-old Moyers sheepishly insists. And true to form, the ‘Amazing Grace” documentary came out of one of them. Release the week of Sept. 9-15, 1990