[2] After the release of Airborne and the subsequent dropping of the band by Columbia Records, the Flying Burrito Brothers pressed on as a touring act, taking a small break in 1977 so that Gib Guilbeau and "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow could release an album on Mercury Records under the name Sierra.

After Sierra's eponymous debut album failed to achieve commercial success, Guilbeau, Kleinow and Sierra drummer Mickey McGee reunited with Skip Battin and Gene Parsons (playing guitar due to a wrist injury) and began to tour as the Flying Burrito Brothers again.

By 1979, Greg Harris and Ed Ponder were hired to replace Joel Scott Hill and Mickey McGee respectively.

This shuffled lineup of the band released Live from Tokyo on Tennessee-based Regency Records to public and critical indifference, however the album's single, a cover of Merle Haggard's "White Line Fever", reached the lower-end of the US country music charts (the first Burritos single ever to enter the charts).

In 1991, the album was released on CD on Relix Records under the original name Close Encounters on the West Coast.