The Rolling Stones’ ‘Wild Horses’ Was Originally by The Flying Burrito Brothers

TL;DR:

Mick Jagger played The Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” to The Flying Burrito Brothers’ Gram Parsons.
Jagger also played The Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” to Parsons, who enjoyed both songs.
The Flying Burrito Brothers released their version of the song before The Rolling Stones did.

Mick Jagger with a microphone during The Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses" era — The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger | Evening Standard/Getty Images

The Rolling Stones‘ “Wild Horses” is one of the band’s most famous ballads. Notably, The Flying Burrito Brothers first recorded the tune. Subsequently, The Flying Burrito Brothers’ Gram Parsons discussed why Mick Jagger gave him the song.

The Flying Burrito Brothers’ Gram Parsons got to hear The Rolling Stones’ ‘Wild Horses’ and ‘Brown Sugar’ before the general public

Rolling Stone reports that, during a 1973 interview, Parsons discussed “Wild Horses.” He said Jagger played the tune for him the night of a music festival. “He played me ‘Wild Horses’ and ‘Brown Sugar,’” he recalled. “And I really dug it. They recorded them in Muscle Shoals about a week or two before.”

Jagger liked the idea of The Flying Burrito Brothers recording the song. “It was a couple of months later I got a call from him, and he said, ‘If I send you the master, will you put a steel guitar on it?’” Parsons said. “He sent me the master and I got Denny Cordell to produce it.”

Why The Flying Burrito Brothers’ Gram Parsons thought about The Rolling Stones’ version of the song

Parsons explained what happened next. “And we went into the Record Plant and I got Leon Russell in there,” he said. “And somebody came in with some sort of strange dust and things just went haywire. The engineer forgot where he was and things like that.

“So they didn’t use that track, and I asked Mick if we could put it on our mixed album if we didn’t release it as a single, and he thought about it and said ‘Alright,’” he added. “And then they didn’t release it for almost a year after that.” Parsons was a fan of “Wild Horses,” calling it “a beautiful song.”

The Flying Burrito Brothers’ “Wild Horses” appeared on their debut album, The Gilded Palace of Sin. The tune was never a single but The Rolling Stones’ was.

How ‘Wild Horses’ performed on the pop charts in the United States and the United Kingdom

The Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” became a minor hit in the United States. It reached No. 28 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed on the chart for eight weeks. The tune appeared on the album Sticky Fingers, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for four weeks. The album spent a total of 69 weeks on the chart.

“Wild Horses” was never a single in the United Kingdom. According to The Official Charts Company, “Wild Horses” never charted in the U.K. On the other hand, Sticky Fingers reached No. 1 in the U.K. for five weeks and remained on the chart for 32 weeks.

“Wild Horses” was a modest hit and it has an interesting connection to The Flying Burrito Brothers.