Music / Passion

"Father, why have you forsaken me?"

"I admire just about everything Peter Gabriel's ever done, from progressive to world music to pop. He's a great man with great ideas— oh, and he's a great musician. This album features instrumentals from the score that he wrote for the Scorsese movie The Last Temptation of Christ, plus some additional bits and pieces. I feel very close to this music. I think in many ways Peter hears music the way that I hear it, so I'd have to say he's a kindred spirit."

—Richard Wright

Passion, released in 1989 through Real World Records in the UK and Geffen Records in the US, is the second soundtrack album by British art pop musician Peter Gabriel. His debut release on Real World, a vanity label created by Gabriel in the wake of Charisma Records' absorption into Virgin Records, the album acts as the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's controversial film The Last Temptation of Christ from the year prior. Like the film, Passion was designed as an unconventional take on Christian music, avoiding the trappings of European classical music commonly associated with the story of Jesus in favor of trying to approximate the kind of music that would've been played in first-century Israel, during Jesus' own life. To do this, Gabriel sourced talent from the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and South Asia, via the resources offered by his organization WOMAD. This included not only returning guest vocalist Youssou N'Dour from So, but also Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Lakshminarayana Shankar, and Baaba Maal, who saw their first major international exposure as a result of their involvement with the album. The collaboration seemed to endear these artists to Gabriel, as Shankar would appear on Gabriel's following two studio albums, with Khan posthumously appearing on the latter as well. Later in the year, Gabriel would release the companion record Passion — Sources, a compilation of related pieces from the same sessions by the artists brought on board to assist Gabriel on this album.

At the same time, however, the album does not represent the soundtrack as it was originally presented in the film. Rather, Gabriel chose to revisit it following the film's release, elaborating upon his work and developing previously unfinished ideas to create a markedly different product than what theatergoers had heard in 1988, similarly to Queen's A Kind of Magic^note based on the Highlander soundtrack before it and David Bowie's 'hours...'^note based on the Omikron: The Nomad Soul soundtrack a decade after it. Thus, Gabriel came to view Passion as a full studio album, which would technically make it his sixth to hold the distinction. That said, however, the fact that its release tied in with The Last Temptation of Christ (to the point where most releases subtitle it Music for The Last Temptation of Christ) results in it generally being seen as more of a soundtrack album than a "proper" studio release. If one splits hairs, this could technically be Gabriel's fifth-and-a-half studio album by nature of this dual categorization.

Because of the nature of its creation, the album is a marked deviation from the styles of music Gabriel had become known for, being an ambient-driven Progressive Rock/New Age album in which the songs are interlinked as a single unit, totaling to what is effectively a 67-minute Israeli symphony. Said symphony lacks any true lyrical content whatsoever, instead featuring occasional nonverbal vocalizations from both Gabriel and various session singers, and is punctuated by an immensely foreboding atmosphere true to the tone of Jesus' final days. There is, of course, also the elephant in the room of this being an overtly Christian Rock album from an artist whose music otherwise tended to be somewhat secular in tone, though given the film this album tied in with, this trait was somewhat inevitable (after all, making secularly-driven music about the central figure of the most widespread religion in the western world is about as easy as raising the dead).

The album peaked at No. 29 on the UK Albums chart and No. 60 on the Billboard 200, later being certified gold in the United States. Additionally, alongside David Byrne's Rei Momo (released later the same year), Passion has since been recognized as a major figure in the popularization of proper World Music, following the mainstream decline of worldbeat in the latter half of the '80s.

Passion wasn't supported by any traditional singles. However, an Animated Music Video for "Zaar", using a portion of the 1987 Stefan Roloff film Lunch, was aired on MTV as a form of promotion; the song would later be included on Gabriel's 1990 Greatest Hits Album Shaking the Tree: Sixteen Golden Greats.

Tracklist:

LP One

Side A

1. "The Feeling Begins" (4:00)
2. "Gethsemane" (1:26)
3. "Of These, Hope" (3:55)
4. "Lazarus Raised" (1:26)
5. "Of These, Hope — Reprise" (2:44)
6. "In Doubt" (1:33)
7. "A Different Drum" (4:40)

Side B

1. "Zaar" (4:53)
2. "Troubled" (2:55)
3. "Open" (3:27)
4. "Before Night Falls" (2:18)
5. "With This Love" (3:40)

LP Two

Side C

1. "Sandstorm" (3:02)
2. "Stigmata" (2:28)
3. "Passion" (7:39)
4. "With This Love (Choir)" (3:20)

Side D

1. "Wall of Breath" (2:29)
2. "The Promise of Shadows" (2:13)
3. "Disturbed" (3:35)
4. "It Is Accomplished" (2:55)
5. "Bread and Wine" (2:21)

Note: CD copies are on a single disc; cassette copies are on a single tape, with each side containing the entirety of each disc from the double-LP release

"If I was a woodcutter, I'd cut. If I was a fire, I'd burn. But I'm a troper and I trope. That's the only thing I can do.":

• Animated Music Video: "Zaar" received one to promote the soundtrack, centering around an androgynous couple interacting while seated at a table. While the song wasn't released as a single, the video did well enough to get the track on Gabriel's first Greatest Hits Album the following year.
• Christian Rock: Technically the case, given the album's subject matter.
• Color Motifs: The 2002 remaster ties in the album with the color burgundy, reflecting both the macro photo on the back cover and the blood Jesus shed on the cross (as the album was primarily the soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ).
• Concept Album: True to its parent film, the album explores the final days of Jesus through instrumental music.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to So before it, Passion is a much darker and more brooding album with an overwhelming tone of dread throughout most of its runtime, tying in with its subject matter about the final days of Jesus of Nazareth.
• Deconstruction: The album is a Genre-Busting effort created as an attempt to create music similar to what could have been played in Israel during Jesus' lifetime, with some Anachronism Stew thrown in for good measure, generally taking Jesus away from the European High Culture trappings of Classical religious music which developed centuries later and in a land, continent, and culture far removed from First Century Israel.
• Design Student's Orgasm: The album cover is an appropriation of Drawing study for Self Image II (1987) by Julian Grater, displaying an elaborately mangled silhouette of Jesus wearing the Crown of Thorns.
• Drone of Dread: One forms the base leitmotif of "Gethsemane".
• Epic Rocking: The Title Track stretches just over seven and a half minutes.
• Idiosyncratic Cover Art: The album cover features visual motifs that would become standard for Gabriel's Real World Records label for a good while. Namely, the album features a rainbow stripe that spans from the bottom-left corner of the front cover to the bottom-right quadrant of the back cover, as well as a macro photograph occupying most of the back cover. Like Gabriel's first proper studio album on the label, Us, the back cover is also predominantly red. A white stripe featuring the artist, album title, and barcode stretch across the top of the back cover and the upper spine, the WOMAD logo is present in the upper-right, and the tracklist is featured on the left side of the back cover in a white box.
• I Have Many Names: Depending on who you talk to, this album is either Passion or Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ. Gabriel tends to prefer the non-subtitled variant, though most releases include the subtitle for legal reasons.
• Instrumentals: The entire album is composed of these, owing to it being mostly a film soundtrack.
• Literary Allusion Title: The track "It Is Accomplished" is titled after the last words of Jesus in the Gospel of John (a marked contrast to the Synoptic Gospels' "Father, why have you forsaken me?"), which also acts as the closing line of the song's parent film.
• Miniscule Rocking:"Gethsemane" and "In Doubt" both clock in at just a minute and a half.
• One-Word Title: Passion (when excluding the subtitle), "Gethsemane", "Zaar", "Troubled", "Open", "Sandstorm", "Stigmata", "Passion", "Disturbed".
• Out-of-Genre Experience: If one were to go by Gabriel's classification of this as a studio album, it would mark a stark contrast to all prior and subsequent releases in its darker, ambient-driven direction and overtly religious themes.
• Pop-Star Composer: An inevitability given that this is Peter Gabriel we're talking about.
• Retraux: To an extreme degree: the album seeks to approximate the kind of music that would've been played in Israel... during the first century AD, owed in part to the parent film's attempt at providing a more historically accurate portrayal of Jesus' time.
• Saved by the Church Bell: "It Is Accomplished" uses a mixture of church bells and Gabriel's choral vocals to signify Jesus' ultimate triumph, dying on the cross as the final sacrifice to liberate mankind from sin.
• Shout-Out: The music video for "Zaar" is an excerpt from the 1987 Stefan Roloff film "Lunch".
• Siamese Twin Songs: Taken to its logical conclusion in that the whole album is intended to be viewed as a single, interconnected piece rather than simply a collection of related songs.
• Speaking Simlish: Done liberally throughout the album as a substitute for lyrical vocals.
• Special Guest: It wouldn't be a Peter Gabriel album without it. The album features contributions from not only returning So guests Youssou N'Dour and Lakshminarayana Shankar, but also Pakistani Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Senegalese singer Baaba Maal, Tears for Fears drummer Manny Elias, Ransom Hold frontman and frequent Gabriel collaborator David Rhodes, Armenian duduk player Vache Hovsepyan, Senegalese sabar master Doudou N'Diaye Rose, E Street Band member David Sancious, prolific session bassist Nathan East, Miles Davis collaborator Billy Cobham, Mevlevi Sufi master Kudsi Erguner, and avant-garde trumpeter Jon Hassell in a wide variety of roles throughout the album.
• Surprisingly Happy Ending: Despite being permeated by an overwhelming sense of dread throughout most of its runtime, the album closes out with the triumphant-sounding "It Is Accomplished" and the peaceful "Bread and Wine", representing Jesus' ultimate triumph in redeeming mankind through His death, with His teachings living on to this day.
• Surreal Music Video: While primarily focusing on a couple at a table, the video for "Zaar" shifts between a number of different, loosely-connected scenes filled with abstract and metaphorical imagery.

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