Guitar legend Steve Vai recently spoke with Guitar World about his classic Passion & Warfare album, now celebrating its 25th Anniversary, and his new release Modern Primitive. An excerpt from the interview is available below.

Q: Can you tell me a little bit about who you were as a person at the time of the release of Passion and Warfare? What were your musical and commercial goals?

Vai: "To really explain that, I’d have to go back five or six years before the release of the album. I recorded my first solo album Flex-Able in 1984, and it was a very innocent project. I released it independently and had very modest expectations in terms of sales or success. I really wasn’t thinking of a professional career or being famous. I had this incredible music teacher in high school and I always thought, Hey, if I ever just ended up teaching music at a high school, that would be great, but I loved the guitar and I loved making music. I loved the whole process of getting an idea and then fishing it out. One of my greatest strengths back then was not really having any expectations—I would just do things without putting too much thought about whether it would sell. My main focus was just on thrilling myself with the funny music I was making."

Q: You were playing at the time with Frank Zappa. What was his influence?

Vai: "I was enamored with Frank’s music, and that flowed into a lot of the stuff I was doing, because he seemed to have it all: the guitar playing, the comedy, the composition, all these things I really responded to. I was in my early twenties when I recorded Flex-Able, which is an interesting time in your life. You've got this almost revolutionary spirit and you really want to bang away at the things that are interesting to you. Since I had my own little studio—a shed that I converted in my backyard—I was really learning a lot about recording, engineering and how to work with people, skills that would become very important later when I recorded Passion and Warfare and my subsequent solo albums."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Steve Vai and Legacy Recordings are commemorating the 25th anniversary of Passion And Warfare with a special 2CD edition of the album which includes the first-ever release of Vai's Modern Primitive songs and recordings. Based on song sketches and works-in-progress penned and recorded by Vai following the release of Flex-Able, his debut album, in January 1984, the music on Modern Primitive has been completed by Vai for release as a full album disc and the 2nd CD is the bonus remastering of the Passion And Warfare 25th Anniversary Edition.

"The music on Flex-Able is so vastly different from Passion And Warfare, one could wonder if the same guy actually made both records," Steve writes in his liner notes for the collection. "Modern Primitive is the missing link between these two records. It's sort of Cro-Magnon Vai."

Newly remastered from the original analog tapes, the Passion And Warfare 25th Anniversary Edition disc includes, as bonus tracks, four previously unreleased recordings from the Passion And Warfare sessions.

The 2CD Modern Primitive / Passion And Warfare 25th Anniversary Edition is housed in a 4-panel soft-pack with a 20-page Modern Primitive booklet and a 24-panel Passion And Warfare poster fold.

In addition to the first-time release of his "lost" Modern Primitive music, composer/producer and electric guitar virtuoso Steve Vai will celebrate the 25th anniversary of his landmark album, Passion And Warfare, with a world tour starting on May 28th featuring—for the first time ever in concert—full performances of his groundbreaking instrumental rock masterpiece in its entirety.

"Performing this record from top to bottom (with some very special surprises in the works) is something I've always dreamed of doing," Vai said.  "There are songs here I've never performed before, and I'm delighted that 25 years after its release, I feel as though my guitar chops are as much up to the task as ever before."

Often cited as one of the greatest and most influential instrumental rock guitar albums ever recorded, Vai's Passion And Warfare was originally released through Relativity/Epic Records in September 1990 and has been certified Gold by the RIAA. Inspired by a series of dreams Vai had experienced as a young man, Passion And Warfare has been described by the artist as "Jimi Hendrix meets Jesus Christ at a party that Ben Hur threw for Mel Blanc." Recorded at The Mothership, Vai's home studio in the Hollywood Hills, Passion And Warfare includes the classic track, "For The Love Of God," cited as one of the best solos of all time in a Guitar World magazine reader's poll.

Modern Primitive tracklisting:

“Bop!”
“Dark Matter”
“Mighty Messengers”
“The Lost Chord”
“Upanishads”
“Fast Note People”
“And We Are One”
“Never Forever”
“Lights Are On”
“No Pockets”
“Pink and Blows Over: Part 1”
“Pink and Blows Over: Part 2 (Mars Attack)”
“Pink and Blows Over: Part 3 (Jazzbo Paddle-foot)”

Passion And Warfare 25th Anniversary Edition tracklisting:

“Liberty”
“Erotic Nightmares”
“The Animal”
“Answers”
“The Riddle”
“Ballerina 12/24”
“For Love Of God”
“The Audience ls Listening”
“I Would Love To”
“Blue Powder”
“Greasy Kid's Stuff”
“Alien Water Kiss”
“Sisters”
“Love Secrets”
“Lovely Elixir” (Bonus)
“And We Are One” (Solo #2) (Bonus)
“As Above” (Bonus)
“So Below” (Bonus)

“Lovely Elixir”: