An American Prayer is the ninth and final studio album by the American rock band the Doors. Following the death of Jim Morrison and the band's breakup, the surviving members of the Doors reconvened to set several of Morrison's spoken word recordings to music. It was the only album by the Doors to be nominated for a Grammy Award in the "Spoken Word" category.
Keyboardist Ray Manzarek perceived An American Prayer as being divided into five parts, with the first covering Morrison's childhood and the second his high school years; the third concerning "the young poet, stoned on a rooftop with acid dreams." The fourth his musical career and finally the fifth is a "final summation in a way, of the man's entire life and his philosophy."
Background
The Doors formed in 1965 and released six studio albums before singer/lyricist Jim Morrison's death in July 1971. The surviving band members (keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore) recorded two additional albums as a trio, but broke up in 1973.
Morrison had originally recorded some of his poetry between 1969 and 1970; the first sessions took place in either Elektra's recording studios or Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, California, while the last recordings were made in Village Recorders, West Los Angeles. These drafts were completed in two stints, first in the spring of 1969, and the other in December 1970. The first session included poems like "Bird of Prey", "Under Waterfall" and "Orange County", sung a cappella by Morrison with the latter cut featuring piano played by him. By January 1971, after the completion of these recordings, Morrison had developed some concepts for the album cover art, and was in correspondence with artist T. E. Breitenbach to design this cover in the form of a triptych. Prior to leaving for Paris in March 1971, Morrison had also approached composer Lalo Schifrin as a possible collaborator on the music to accompany the poetry, instead of the other members of the Doors.
In 1978, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore reunited to record the music for An American Prayer. On November 19, 1978, in the Los Angeles Times, Ray Manzarek explained, "We did this album to show the side of Jim which has been underrated all these years." Morrison's friend Frank Lisciandro served as one of the co-producers of the album, while Pamela Courson's father "Corky" Courson was also involved in the record. According to the book Break on Through, when recording the music, the three Doors members decided to produce a different musical style from Morrison's original vision of orchestral music on the project. Other pieces of music and spoken word recorded by the Doors and Morrison were also used in the audio collage, such as dialogue from Morrison's film HWY: An American Pastoral, snippets from jam sessions, excerpts from interviews, and featuring sections from "The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)" and "Riders on the Storm". Densmore devised an early use of synthesized drums for the former.
Artwork
After Morrison had done his recordings, he asked American artist T. E. Breitenbach to design the cover for the album. He sent him a letter about his suggestions for the concept:
After Morrison's death however, the album's producers were unaware of his intention to use the painting, and used for the front and back cover photos taken by Edmund Teske and Joel Brodsky respectively. The existence of this lost painting collaboration came to light actually decades later, when the artist himself posted it on his website.
Release and reception
An American Prayer was released on November 17, 1978, as "a Jim Morrison Album" with "Music by the Doors". It initially sold approximately 250,000 copies, making it the best-selling spoken word album at the time. According to John Haeny, it later exceeded the one million copies shipped. The album included a composite live version of "Roadhouse Blues", which received some radio airplay on rock radio stations. The album peaked at number 54 on the US charts. It was also nominated for the 1980 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
