The Story Behind Johnny Cash’s Only Rolling Stones Cover, and One of the Final Songs Recorded With Brian Jones

“And now…” said John Lennon as he introduced the Rolling Stones for the band’s long-awaited segment of Rock and Roll Circus, the musical variety show crafted to promote their 1968 album Beggar’s Banquet. Waiting until the wee hours of the morning for their turn to perform, the Stones performed “Jumping Jack Flash,” then barreled through their set of “Parachute Woman,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and “Sympathy for the Devil.”

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The second song in the Stones’ set was another Beggar’s Banquet track, “No Expectations,” written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Recorded in May of 1968, the song features Brian Jones‘ acoustic slide guitar. Due to his heightened drug use at the time, Jones had become mostly absent from the Beggar’s Banquet sessions, and “No Expectations” became one of his final major contributions to the band before he was fired on June 8, 1969, less than a month before he died.

“That’s Brian playing steel guitar,” recalled Mick Jagger in a 1995 interview on how the arrangement of the song came together. “We were sitting around in a circle on the floor, singing and playing, recording with open mikes.”

“He Was There With Everyone Else”

It was the last time, according to Jagger, that he noticed the guitarist connected to something the band was working on. “That was the last time I remember Brian really being totally involved in something really worth doing,” said Jagger. “He was there with everyone else. It’s funny how you remember, but that was the last moment I remember him doing that because he had just lost interest in everything.”

A bluesier ballad, “No Expectations” flips through the lonely aftermath of heartbreak, and became more of an elegy to the Jones, following his death in 1969: Our love is like our music / Why is it here, and then it’s gone?

Your heart is like a diamond
You throw your pearls at swine
And as I watch you leavin’ me
You pack my peace of mind

Our love was like the water
That splashes on a stone
Our love is like our music
Why is it here, and then it’s gone?

A Favorite Song To Cover

Covered nearly 80 times since its release, Joan Baez was one of the first to record her rendition of “No Expectations” on her 1970 album One Day at a Time.

Nearly a decade later, Johnny Cash picked up the tempo of “No Expectations” and added more layers of bluegrass and some Spanish beats, reimagining the song on his 1978 album Gone Girl.

The song became a centerpiece of the album and remained the only song by the Stones ever covered by Cash. That year, the song was also featured in the anti-war drama Coming Home, with Jane Fonda and John Voight. On his 1998 album Closing In on the Fire, Cash’s Highwaymen bandmate Waylon Jennings also released a cover of “No Expectations,” three decades after its initial release.

Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images