The ‘Beggar’s Banquet’ Deep Cut That Became One of the Final Recordings by Brian Jones and Johnny Cash’s Only Rolling Stones Cover

After nearly 15 hours of waiting around on set and sitting through performances by Taj Mahal, The Who, Jethro Tull, Marianne Faithfull, and the Dirty Mac—the one-off (one-song) supergroup featuring John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Keith Richards, and Eric Clapton—the Rolling Stones were ready to perform their segment for Rock and Roll Circus, a musical variety show the band crafted to promote their 1968 album Beggar’s Banquet,

“And now…” said Lennon, introducing the Stones, who broke into “Jumping Jack Flash.” Tired and exhausted, the band barreled through their set of “Parachute Woman,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and “Sympathy for the Devil,” along with percussionist Kwasi “Rocky” Dzidzornu.

“No Expectations”

The second song in the 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, 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.”

Though Jones had become mostly absent from the Beggar’s Banquet recording sessions, due to his heightened drug use, Jagger said it was the last time he noticed the guitarist connected to something they were working on.

“That was the last time I remember Brian really being totally involved in something that was 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.”

‘Our Love is Like Our Music’

The bluesy ballad moves through the loneliness felt after a breakup but takes on a different meaning following the death of Jones and serves as an elegy to the guitarist—Our love is like our music / Why is it here, and then it’s gone?

Take me to the station
And put me on the train
I’ve got no expectations
To pass through here again

Once I was a rich man
Now I am so poor
But never in my sweet short life
Have I felt like this before

Your heart is like the 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?

So take me to the airport
And put me on a plane
I got no expectations
To pass through here again

[RELATED: On This Day: The Rolling Stones Film ‘Rock and Roll Circus’ With John Lennon, The Who, and More Then Shelve It for Nearly 30 Years]

‘Gone Girl’

In 1970, Joan Baez recorded “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: Johnny Cash 1975 in London. (Chris Walter/WireImage)