The Beatles fans' screams. 'Live Beatles' and 'Studio Beatles' had become entirely different beasts." The band's concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on 29 August was their last commercial concert. It marked the end of a four-year period dominated by almost nonstop touring that included over 1,400 concert appearances internationally. Freed from the burden of touring, the Beatles embraced an increasingly experimental approach as they recorded "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", beginning in late November 1966. According to engineer Geoff Emerick, the album's recording took over 700 hours. He recalled the band's insistence "that everything on "Sgt. Pepper" had to be
The Beatles' 1966 tour of Germany, Japan and the Philippines their longtime manager, Brian Epstein, and make the decision to end their career as live performers that year. By contrast, the stay in Tokyo established an enduring bond between the Beatles and Japan, where each of the band members visited or performed in the decades following the group's break-up. Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, had intended that 1966 would follow the format of the previous two years, in which the Beatles had made a feature film with an accompanying soundtrack album, toured in North America and select countries during the summer months, and then recorded a second album for a