No mere compendium of “Steve’s latest riffs,” it was crafted to be the roadmap to the future of the guitar a project so sprawling and ambitious, Vai had to develop a revolutionary seven-string guitar to capture all the notes rattling around in his skull. Produced and engineered by the guitarist himself, the album was the culmination of 20 years of study, experimentation, 12-hour marathon practice days and serious rock star image building. I had pictures of my fingers taken after that session, and they were bleeding under the skin.” “When it came time to record ‘For the Love of God,’ my fingers were totally gone.
“I was trying to push myself to the limit,” says Vai. One song was rumored to feature no less than 30 backward guitars, while another track, “For the Love of God,” was recorded after a reported four straight days of meditating, fasting and non-stop practicing. In an era known for outrageous guitar playing, the album promised to be the last word-a veritable Macy’s Fourth of July fireworks display of technique, tones and color. It’s hard to explain the excitement and anticipation surrounding the release of Steve Vai’s second solo album, Passion and Warfare, when it was released in September 1990. In 2016, Vai embarked on the Passion and Warfare 25th Anniversary World Tour, where he played the album in its entirety for the first time.
The song "For the Love of God" is available for download for the 2007 video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, and was voted the 29th best solo of all time by a readers' poll in Guitar World magazine. The equipment used to record Passion and Warfare was: Ibanez JEM and Universe guitars Charvel Green Meanie guitar Marshall JCM900 and Carvin X-100B amplifiers ADA MP-1 preamplier Boss DS-1 distortion pedal Eventide H3000 harmonizer Lexicon 480L. The drums were subsequently re-recorded for the album. Vai was introduced to Carvin by his mentor Frank Zappa, who had also used the X-100B. "Blue Powder" was originally recorded in 1986 as a showcase track for Carvin, using their X-100B amplifier, and given away with Guitar Player magazine in flexi disc format. For what would come to be one of his most popular songs to date, "For the Love of God", he fasted for ten days and recorded the song on the fourth day of the fast. Vai utilized many unusual recording techniques on the album. Vai states that planning the album started as early as 1982, but was shelved after joining the David Lee Roth band and not picked up again until parting ways with Roth in 1989. As such, Whitesnake frontman David Coverdale has small spoken parts on Passion and Warfare. It was all recorded in The Mothership studio at his home in the Hollywood Hills, a 1,600-square-foot (150 m2) building in which his guitar parts for Whitesnake's 1989 album Slip of the Tongue were also recorded.
It was written based on a series of dream sequences that Vai had when he was younger, and in the guitar music book of the album, Vai sums it up as "Jimi Hendrix meets Jesus Christ at a party that Ben Hur threw for Mel Blanc". Passion and Warfare is the second studio album by guitarist Steve Vai, released in September 1990 through Relativity and Epic Records.