Zevon's 1982 release "The Envoy" returned to the high standard of "Excitable Boy" but was not a commercial success. It was an eclectic but characteristic set that included such compositions as "Ain't That Pretty at All", "Charlie's Medicine" and "Jesus Mentioned", the first of Zevon's two musical reactions to the death of Elvis Presley; the other is the song "Porcelain Monkey" on "Life'll Kill Ya" in 2000. The album also contains the first of Zevon's writing collaborations with respected writers of fiction: "The Overdraft", co-written with Thomas McGuane. The title track was dedicated to Philip Habib, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East during the early 1980s. In the liner notes for the 1996 anthology "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead", Zevon stated that after the song came out, Habib sent him "a very nice letter of appreciation on State Department stationery". The lyrics of another track, "The Hula Hula Boys", were excerpted in Hunter S. Thompson's 1983 book "The Curse of Lono".