In 1967, Hendrix told the journalist Keith Altham that "Third Stone from the Sun" is about a visiting space alien who, upon evaluation of the human species, decides that people are not fit to rule Earth, destroys their civilization, and places the planet in the care of chickens. The song is composed of two contrasting sections, one that features a jazzy guitar melody played in the style of Wes Montgomery over a straightforward rock tempo, and another that showcases Hendrix's free-form mixolydian mode guitar lines with a jazz beat. The track contains no proper vocals, instead using spoken words played at half-speed to invoke images of interstellar space travel. In addition to jazz elements, Unterberger identified Hendrix's use of surf music motifs in the track that are reminiscent of earlier works by the Ventures, a group from the Pacific Northwest that Hendrix would have heard during his childhood.