“Third Stone From The Sun” by Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix was already fooling around with pieces of "Third Stone from the Sun" before he'd put the Jimi Hendrix Experience together, and the band had a version on tape by December 1966. It surfaced on Are You Experienced, the Experience's 1967 debut, with Chas Chandler producing, and it's the album's big cosmic detour: a mostly instrumental freakout where jazz chops and psychedelic rock melt into one another, with a few spoken bits drifting through.

The title is pure sci-fi. Hendrix had a real appetite for science fiction, and the third stone from the sun is Earth, the third planet out in the solar system. Other artists have since cut their own versions, and some have borrowed its guitar line for songs of their own.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.