Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by English rock band the Beatles. Released on 26 May 1967 in the United Kingdom and 2 June 1967 in the United States, it was an immediate commercial and critical success, spending 27 weeks at the top of the UK albums chart and 15 weeks at number one in the US. On release, the album was lauded by the vast majority of critics for its innovations in music production, songwriting and graphic design, for bridging a cultural divide between popular music and high art, and for providing a musical representation of its generation and the contemporary counterculture.

By 1966, the Beatles had grown weary of live performance. In John Lennon's opinion, they could "send out four waxworks ... and that would satisfy the crowds. Beatles concerts are nothing to do with music anymore. They're just bloody tribal rites." In June that year, two days after finishing the album Revolver, the group set off for a tour that started in Germany. While in Hamburg they received an anonymous telegram stating: "Do not go to Tokyo. Your life is in danger". The threat was taken seriously in light of the controversy surrounding the tour among Japan's religious and conservative groups, with particular opposition to the Beatles' planned performances at the sacred Nippon Budokan arena. As an added precaution, 35,000 police were mobilised and tasked with protecting the group, who were transported from hotels to concert venues in armoured vehicles. The polite and restrained Japanese audiences shocked the band, because the absence of screaming fans allowed them to hear how poor their live performances had become. By the time that they arrived in the Philippines, where they were threatened and manhandled by its citizens for not visiting the First Lady Imelda Marcos, the group had grown unhappy with their manager, Brian Epstein, for insisting on what they regarded as an exhausting and demoralising itinerary.  After the Beatles' return to London, George Harrison replied to a question about their long-term plans: "We'll take a couple of weeks to recuperate before we go and get beaten up by the Americans." His comments proved prophetic, as soon afterwards Lennon's remarks about the Beatles being "more popular than Jesus" embroiled the band in controversy and protest in America's Bible Belt. A public apology eased tensions, but a miserable US tour in August that was marked by half-filled stadiums and subpar performances proved to be their last. The author Nicholas Schaffner writes:  To the Beatles, playing such concerts had become a charade so remote from the new directions they were pursuing that not a single tune was attempted from the just-released Revolver LP, whose arrangements were for the most part impossible to reproduce with the limitations imposed by their two-guitars-bass-and-drums stage lineup.  Upon the Beatles' return to England, rumours began to circulate that they had decided to break up. Harrison informed Epstein that he was leaving the band, but was persuaded to stay on the assurance that there would be no more tours. The group took a three-month break, during which they focused on individual interests. Harrison travelled to India for six weeks to study the sitar under the instruction of Ravi Shankar and develop his interest in Hindu philosophy. Having been the last of the Beatles to concede that their live performances had become futile, Paul McCartney collaborated with Beatles producer George Martin on the soundtrack for the film The Family Way. Lennon acted in the film How I Won the War and attended art showings, such as one at the Indica Gallery where he met his future wife Yoko Ono. Ringo Starr used the break to spend time with his wife Maureen and son Zak.

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