Passion and Warfare

This is the second studio album, released by Relativity and Epic on 22 May 1990 as 88561-1037-2, fourteen tracks. It reached number 18 on the Billboard 200, sold a million and a half copies worldwide and was certified Gold by the RIAA; CBS/Sony issued the Japanese edition on 31 May as CSCS 5180. It was recorded between 1985 and 1990 at Vai's home studio, The Mothership, a building of some 150 square metres where he had also cut his guitar parts for Whitesnake's Slip of the Tongue in 1989. That connection shows in the credits: David Coverdale, Adrian Vandenberg and Rudy Sarzo of Whitesnake are credited with backing vocals, and Coverdale contributes spoken vocals too. According to Vai, planning had started as early as 1982 but was shelved when he joined David Lee Roth's band, and was not picked up again until he parted from Roth in 1989. The recording methods were unusual. For the Love of God, which became one of his best-known pieces, was recorded on the fourth day of a ten-day fast. Blue Powder had first been cut in 1986 as a showcase for Carvin's X-100B amplifier and given away as a flexi disc with Guitar Player magazine; only the drums were re-recorded for the album. It was Frank Zappa, an X-100B user himself, who introduced Vai to Carvin. The video for The Audience Is Listening got regular airplay on MTV. In the album's sheet music book Vai describes the record as Jimi Hendrix meeting Jesus Christ at a party that Ben Hur threw for Mel Blanc, and readers of Guitar World later voted the solo on For the Love of God the 29th best of all time.