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the Beatles, but "if you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then okay, I'm sorry." Rubber Soul had marked a major step forward; Revolver, released in August 1966 a week before the band's final tour, marked another. Pitchfork identifies it as "the sound of a band growing into supreme confidence" and "redefining what was expected from popular music." Described by Gould as "woven with motifs of circularity, reversal, and inversion", Revolver featured sophisticated songwriting and a greatly expanded repertoire of musical styles ranging from innovative classical string arrangements to psychedelic rock. Abandoning the group photograph that had become the norm, its cover—designed by Klaus Voorman, a friend of the band since their Hamburg days—was a "stark, arty, black-and-white collage that caricatured the Beatles in a pen-and-ink style beholden to Aubrey Beardsley." The album was preceded by the single "Paperback Writer", backed by "Rain". The Beatles shot short promo films for both songs, described as "among the first true music videos", which aired on Top of the Pops and The Ed Sullivan Show. Among Revolver's most experimental tracks was "Tomorrow Never Knows", for whose lyrics Lennon drew from Timothy Leary's The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The song's creation involved eight tape decks distributed about the recording studio building, each manned by an engineer or band member, who randomly varied the movement of a tape loop while Martin created a composite recording
by sampling the incoming data. McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby" made prominent use of a string octet; it has been described as "a true hybrid, conforming to no recognizable style or genre of song." Harrison was developing as a songwriter, and three of his compositions earned a place on the record. In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked Revolver as the third greatest album of all time. On the US tour that followed, the Beatles played none of its songs. The final show, at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, on 29 August, was their last commercial concert. It marked the end of a four-year period dominated by touring that included over 1400 concert appearances internationally. Freed from the burden of touring, the band's desire to experiment increased as they recorded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, beginning in December