The album's lack of commercial success caused Zevon's label to terminate his recording contract.

[citation needed] The title track was inspired by veteran American diplomat Philip Habib's shuttle diplomacy during the 1982 Lebanon War.

Zevon later said of the album's lack of success, "I would start a record more or less as soon as I'd finished the one previous to it, and they took longer, cost more and more, and actually did sort of less and less well.

[6] Despite the fact that "Let Nothing Come Between You", a love ballad written by Zevon, charted as high as 24 on the Mainstream Billboard Rock chart, Asylum dropped Zevon after the commercial failure of The Envoy.

It would be five years before Zevon made another studio album, 1987's Sentimental Hygiene, released on Virgin Records.