Revolver (Beatles album) group collective since 1962, and gave them an unprecedented amount of time to prepare for a new album. Writing in "The Beatles Forever", Nicholas Schaffner cites 1966 as the start of the band's "'psychedelic' period" and adds: "That adjective implies not only the influence of certain mind-altering chemicals, but also the freewheeling spectrum of wide-ranging colors that their new music seemed to evoke." Music journalist Carol Clerk describes "Revolver" as having been "decisively informed by acid", following John Lennon and George Harrison's continued experimentation with the drug LSD since the spring of 1965.<ref name="Clerk/Uncut"> Available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required).</ref>
The Beatles' 1966 US tour tour, the band returned to Shea Stadium in New York, where they performed to an audience of 45,000, compared with the 56,000 world record attendance they had achieved the previous year. After the 1966 tour, they would become a studio band and focused exclusively on record production. In March 1966, Maureen Cleave interviewed John Lennon and the rest of the Beatles as part of a "London Evening Standard" series on the theme "How Does a Beatle Live?" During the Lennon interview at Kenwood, Cleave noted Lennon's interest in Christianity and religions, to which he replied: Although the article went largely