Talk:An American Prayer

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the An American Prayer article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Albums

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Albums, an attempt at building a useful resource on recordings from a variety of genres. If you would like to participate, visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.AlbumsWikipedia:WikiProject AlbumsTemplate:WikiProject AlbumsAlbum articles

Rock music Low‑importance

	Rock music portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Rock music, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Rock music on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Rock musicWikipedia:WikiProject Rock musicTemplate:WikiProject Rock musicRock music articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Tip: Anchors are case-sensitive in most browsers.

This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.

[[Roadhouse Blues#Other version|Roadhouse Blues]]

Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. | Reporting errors

"...by the Doors" ??

I was surprised to see the very first line in the page say that An American Prayer is "a studio album by the rock band the Doors." On the cover it says explicitly "Jim Morrison," with "music by The Doors." Give Jim his credit, this is his album. That the band added music is great, but his poetry is what this is about. Can someone change this?

I agree. It's not a Doors album, certainly not a studio album by the band and I can't recall ever seeing it billed as such outside of this article. It's a Jim Morrison album with music by the other members of the band. To suggest it is a Doors album based on the fact all members played on it is a stretch and IMO a review on Amazon isn't sufficient sourcing to back up the claim. There was no joint effort between JM and the others - it was a spoken work album that Morrison recorded and sat around for years before Manzarek et al added backing music. Anyway my personally belief is it should be changed to something like:

An American Prayer is an album of spoken word poetry by Jim Morrison with backing music by The Doors. Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors up until his 1971 death, made recordings of his poetry in 1969 and 1970. In 1978, seven years after lead singer Jim Morrison died and five years after the remaining members of the band broke up, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore recorded backing tracks over Morrison's poetry (originally recorded in 1969 and 1970). 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 and snippets from jam sessions.

Thoughts? Tigerman2005 (talk) 01:49, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

American Prayer?

Why is An American Prayer currently redirecting to American Prayer? I always thought that the title is 'An American Prayer', and to be honest I've never heard anyone using the other title. I suggest swapping both pages. -- Parasti 15:15, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Please do so. --82.182.24.17 13:03, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Stories and poetry.

An American Prayer contains not just poetry (or better, parts of poems) from the recording session, but also monologue from Morrison's movie titled HWY: An American Pastoral. I'm thinking of adding these to the Morrison article. Both the poetry session and the movie aren't very popular and it's somewhat difficult to find reliable information on them, though, and my English is far from fluent. So, if there are people willing to add a reference to the movie as well, please do. -- Parasti 15:26, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

An American Prayer is one of my favorite doors works.

This is what was in Jim's head this poetry this artwork of words. I think the rest of the band did a wonderful job of presenting these works in a way that all Doors fans can relate to. This band was always so art driven and Morrison's head was full of bizarre thoughts and musings that just blended so beautifully with the music. I love this piece of work and listen to it as much as any other Doors album in my collection. Give it a try on a Saturday night with a nice glass of wine and what ever else opens your mind. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.128.251.30 (talk) 23:09, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strange Days cover!?

Who the hell put Strange Days cover on this article?? Could someone change it, please? Moreover, anonymous 66.128.251.30... Who cares about what you think of this record? This is not a review site, thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.0.181.80 (talk) 14:26, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cover photo

Anyone know if the cover image is by Joel Brodsky?Mercurywoodrose (talk) 00:36, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Choice

The link to what is supposed to be the song Choice by Orbital redirects to an article on the concept of choice. I'll remove the hyperlink since there doesn't appear to be an article for the song. Also I'd need to hear the song but Morrison shouting "Wake up!" is also on the live recording of Celebration of the Lizard right? Are we sure the sample used isn't from that? It's been too long since I listened to all this so I'll try and get around to it soon! Tigerman2005 (talk) 01:53, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Locked but needs an adit

The article intro includes the phrase:

The album posthumously features Jim Morrison after his death

That definitely needs clean-up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.61.16.172 (talk) 02:20, 9 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Weird Wording?

I don't understand the second part of the sentence: "The first session included poems like "Bird of Prey", "Under Waterfall" and "Orange County",[6] sang a cappella by Morrison with the latter featuring piano played by him." (emphasis by me). That's either because I don't speak/understand English very well, or because there's something wrong with the wording - can someone please help clarify? --178.165.167.107 (talk) 14:12, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking it over once more, "sang" should probably read "sung" or "being sung", and "the latter" must refer to "Orange County". So, Morrison sings "a capella", but plays the piano as well - but not accompanying himself (else it wouldn't be "a capella") - there must be some sort of independant singing- and piano pieces, or sections. Is that correct? - If so, I find the way of describing it complicated, difficult to understand. --178.165.167.107 (talk) 14:40, 8 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Track lengths

@Unkownsolidier: Any particular reason why the track lengths shouldn’t be listed in the tracklist? Unless the versions on streaming contain alternate versions or smth I don’t see why they shouldn’t be included. Elephantranges (talk) 03:14, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Elephantranges: It's per the source of the original album's liner notes release. So we should keep it that way. Unkownsolidier (talk) 12:35, 21 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]