Songfacts®:

• After diving headlong into disco with "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?," Rod Stewart entered the '80s with Passion, a synth-heavy track where he sings about one of his favorite emotions. This passion is a close cousin to lust, bringing euphoria but also danger.
• Stewart wrote this song with four of his band members: Gary Grainger, Jim Cregan, Kevin Savigar and Phil Chen. It was co-produced by Tom Dowd, the man at the controls for classic albums like Lynyrd Skynyrd's Street Survivors and The Allman Brothers' Idlewild South.
• Some of Stewart's biggest hits, including "Maggie May," were recorded quickly with ease. This one got sticky.
  
  "This little bugger took forever to record," Stewart wrote in his Storyteller collection. "Tom Dowd nearly smoked himself into an early grave trying to get it on tape, the trouble being that I couldn't explain to the band (who were by now becoming weary from four days battling with the same tune), the sound I had in my head. 'Lo and behold,' I said, gazing at my watch. 'It's six o'clock, time for a wee refreshment.' And O my loyal troops followed me through a battlefield of amps, guitars, mikes and keyboards to the pub, where the whole mess was sorted out over a measure of 'Pirates' Pleasure.'"
• Stewart sang about a similar emotion in 1984 when he had a hit with "Infatuation."