An American Prayer is a spoken-word poetry-and-music composition created by the surviving members of The Doors -- Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore -- as a musical setting for Jim Morrison's poetry. Morrison had recorded his poetry in organized sessions at Elektra's West Coast studio in 1969, engineered by John Haeny, intending to produce a dedicated poetry album. After Morrison's death in 1971, these tapes remained unused until the mid-1970s, when the remaining Doors members revisited the recordings and composed new music to accompany them. The resulting work, released posthumously in 1978, functions as an extended suite rather than a conventional song, weaving together interconnected sections including "Awake," "Dawn's Highway," "Newborn Awakening," "Stoned Immaculate," and "The World on Fire," among others. Morrison's recited verses explore themes of awakening, Native American spirituality, sexuality, war, and mortality, while the instrumental accompaniment ranges from ethereal keyboards and subtle guitar lines to rhythmic passages that shift between meditative and intense moods. The composition occupies a unique place in rock history as a poetry-music hybrid, distinct from The Doors' earlier psychedelic rock catalog. It has not entered the broader jazz or popular standards repertoire but endures as a significant artifact of Morrison's literary ambitions and the band's experimental reach.
