“The Beatles!” snorts my exasperated 13-year-old daughter, Emma. “Why does everything always have to go back to the Beatles?”

        Sorry, girl. As much as you and the rest of today's teens might like to think Limp Bizkit invented rock 'n' roll, as far as rock bands go, everything does pretty much have to go back to the Beatles. Before them, rock 'n' roll's teen idols were Elvis, Ricky Nelson and Frankie Avalon. Rock stars didn't write their own songs, and “bands” were all about the frontman (the rest of the group, including Elvis' guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, were generally faceless, underpaid hired guns).

        There were exceptions, of course. Chuck Berry was arguably early rock's greatest songwriter/performer; Buddy Holly wrote his own stuff and the early Beach Boys hits were Brian Wilson originals.

        But as the world's most popular act, when the Beatles wrote their own songs they also rewrote the rules. From then on, bands were expected to write their own material. Even today, 30 years after John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr broke up, any group that follows the time-honored two-guitars-bass-and-drums mantra owes it all to the Beatles.

        As if further proof was needed, here's The Beatles Anthology by the Beatles and associates.

        An oral history straight from the fab source, the book is pretty much the video Anthology in print, but that doesn't begin to describe what looks to be the rock book of the year.

        It's a coffeetable book for sturdy coffeetables, weighing in at 6 1/2 pounds. Because the Beatles opened their personal archives and family albums, it's packed with stuff even the most fanatical Fab Four follower hasn't seen.

        One potential weakness is that one of the lads has been dead for 20 years. But John Lennon was ahead of his time in many ways and his candid, sharply observant comments about his band sound contemporary.

        “What can I tell you about myself which you have not already found out from those who do not lie?” he writes, getting in the first word as he introduces his section on his childhood.

RE-RELEASES

The Beatles Anthology isn't the only new Fab Four-related book coming out this month: Being reissued this week are John Lennon's first book, In His Own Write (Simon & Schuster; $15) and Yoko Ono's Grapefruit (Simon & Schuster; $15).

        Each former Beatle takes a few pages to describe his early years, following the John-Paul-George-Ringo pecking order. John's is cobbled together from interviews throughout his life, from 1964-1980, shortly before his death (many Lennon anniversaries happen in the coming weeks; he would have been 60 Monday ; Dec. 8 marks 20 years since his murder).

        He provides an eerie example of how much was lost with his death as he talks about his own heroes, “I still love Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis . . . Chuck Berry is one of the all-time great poets.” That all three are still on the oldies circuit gives an idea of how vital Lennon himself could have been today.

        Dozens of Beatles books are out, but this is by far the most personal, as the four men talk about their childhoods, their teen years, forming the band, their infamous, R-rated escapades in Hamburg.

        But while the social history of the band is told in detail, few other details are left to the imagination in this remarkably comprehensive book. For guitar geeks, there's an “Instrumental break” section in which the band members reminisce about the instruments that created those world-altering records. George remembers buying his famous black Gretsch (“my first American guitar”) from “a sailor in Liverpool for 75 pounds.” Their equipment preferences also reveal their roots (and continued insecurities) growing up poor in a British seaport town. Paul explains why he never played a Fender bass, the industry standard — “I've never felt like I could afford a Fender. Even now . . . a Fender is still a bit of an exotic instrument to me.”

        The book is filled with fascinating bits of information, such as John's revelation that George's fascination with the sitar, Hinduism and Indian culture began with the movie Help! and its stereotyped, slapstick Indian characters.

        George candidly discusses another kind of beginning. “My first shag was in Hamburg — with Paul and John and (original Beatle drummer) Pete Best all watching. We were in bunk beds. They couldn't really see anything because I was under the covers, but after I'd finished they all applauded and cheered. At least they kept quiet while I was doing it.”

        The Beatles discuss their finances, including some horrific publishing deals. “For "Yesterday,' which I wrote totally on my own without John's or anyone's help, I am on 15 percent (ownership)...to this day...,” says Paul.

        Paul reveals just how inexperienced the Beatles were when they first met their producer George Martin. Their song, “Please Please Me” was at that time, recalls Mr. Martin, "a Roy Orbison type of song, a very slow rocker.” “We sang it,” Paul recounts, “and George Martin said, "Can we change the tempo?' We said, "What's that?”'

        The visual style changes through the book, from neat layouts of the cleaner “mod” look — crisply cut suits and black-and-white photos of the early years — to the splashier, hypercolorful psychedelia of the Sgt. Pepper's era, appropriately laid out in a more eye-popping, less linear style.

        Even as it provides a virtual Beatles museum between two covers, full of reproduced set lists, ID cards, performance contracts, rare photos (e.g., a pre-teen Ringo playing the accordion; outtakes from album cover sessions, including Sgt. Pepper's and the notorious “butcher cover” for Yesterday and Today), The Beatles Anthology manages to be moving. Along with the minutiae, it's a story of four young dreamers who wanted the world and got it. Then, of course, lost it, as their time passed, that world changed and their own focus shifted. And, while Lennon's relationship with Yoko Ono remains the catalyst for the groups' breakup, that breakup seems inevitable here, as the boys from Liverpool grew up and became men of the world.

        The three survivors close the book looking back at their Beatle days from 30 years on. “I think we gave some sort of freedom to the world,” Paul muses.“They became the closest friends I've ever had,” recalls Ringo. George, usually thought of as the most spiritual Beatle, is firmly in the material world. “If you listen to the stuff that's going on now,” he asserts, “all the good stuff is stolen from the Beatles. Most of the good licks and riffs or ideas and titles. The Beatles have been plundered for 30 years.”

        John of course, has the final word, as the endpiece reproduces a yearbook-type autograph from his schoolboy days, “By hook or by crook, I'll be last in this book.”

        For the truly hard-core fan, there's nothing radically new here. The Anthology wasn't written to change Beatles history. But it's a story every baby boomer lived through. I was 10 when I saw the Beatles' first Ed Sullivan appearance and heard their early records on my older brother's phonograph. By 1966, I was a 12-year-old fan, buying Revolver, my first Beatles LP — my first LP, period. The Anthology brings those times vividly back.

        The Beatles Anthology is the story of the baby boom's coming of age, but there's much more. Even Beatles-exhausted kids will find something to identify with, the roots of their own rock bands.
       

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