… I was just going to do something for me.”īut it was a hit became a gold record, much to Vai’s surprise. “I had this music in me that I really wanted to make, and there was nothing about that record that was conventional, in comparison to most things that were happening at that time,” he said.
He’d been thinking about the music that would become “Passion and Warfare” since the early ’80s. It was a side project, definitely a little eccentric and a bit of an oddity - all-instrumental guitar records aren’t usually hard-charging rock and speed metal affairs like “Passion and Warfare.” The record announces itself with an opening call of “Heads up!” followed by a dramatic drumroll and then Vai’s high-drama guitar wails and noodles on “Liberty.” Throughout, there are strange sonic dramas, touches of rock and metal and blues and avant-garde composition and there are off-kilter spoken-word samples that anticipated the tropes of today’s electronic dance music.Īfter being a team player for years in other bands, he was eager to let loose his own musical vision. “I was feeling a lot of freedom and I was fearless in a way,” he explained, “because I was coming from a lot of big rock star-type success.” The triumph of “Passion and Warfare” emerged out of his being creatively untethered in that moment and confident in his bold vision in a way only a heavy metal guitarist in his mid-20s can be. When he went into his Hollywood Hills studio to record “Passion and Warfare” in 1990, Vai was coming off years recording and touring with Zappa, then Roth and then Whitesnake.