Two books that came out this month make stunningly clear -- as if such clarification were necessary -- the stark differences between John Lennon and the three surviving Beatles: Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr. In The Beatles Anthology, a 350-page coffee-table book, the four band members tell the story of the Beatles in their own words, with Lennon's portion of the narrative cobbled together from various interviews he did before his death in 1980. Despite its cumbersome size and weight, the inclusion of extensive contemporary interviews with McCartney, Harrison and Starr and the book's pretensions to being definitive, The Beatles Anthology tells us little we didn't already know about the band.

The new, complete version of Lennon Remembers tells another story entirely. Consisting of a fiery interview with Lennon conducted by Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner in December 1970 and printed in the magazine shortly afterwards (and published as a book in 1971, against Lennon's wishes), Lennon Remembers is as riveting a document today as it was three decades ago -- and for precisely the same reasons.

For all that rock stars seemed more accessible in the Sixties, the media was far less omnipresent than it is today, as well as far less aggressive. With no Internet, no cable television and only three networks, there were infinitely fewer outlets for information about popular music. And the mainstream media still regarded rock & roll as something of a novelty. Despite their breakup, the Beatles still seemed as remote as Olympian gods, their manifestations arbitrary and unpredictable. They may have been among the most famous people in the world -- and they may even have been, in Lennon's provocative terms, "more popular than Jesus" -- but very little was known about their actual lives.

When facts are not available to ground people in reality, myths often grow to take their place, and the Beatles were surely among the most mythologized figures of their era -- or any other era, for that matter. It seemed like nothing the band did -- from musical experimention to drug use, from public outspokenness to exploring Eastern spirituality - could dispel the myth of the Beatles as the cuddly Fab Four, cute young boys whom even parents on the other side of the generational divide could love.

And in a certain sense, The Beatles Anthology perpetuates that myth as well. Not because anything in it is factually wrong or that important parts of the band's story are missing. For the most part, the book is responsible -- even a bit dutiful -- to rendering the history as we know it. But that's the problem. You would think a book like this would only be worth doing if it told some truths -- good or bad -- that had not already seen the light of day. But McCartney, Harrison and Starr still speak with the caution of people who feel they have something to protect. You could say -- and I would agree -- that they have a right to their privacy. But then don't write a book. It's sad -- and sadly unavoidable -- to think that they still believe they need to protect the myth of the Beatles.

The ferocious energy that drives Lennon Remembers could not be more opposed to the breezy reminiscences of The Beatles Anthology. Gripped by the fierce emotional demands of the primal scream therapy he and Yoko Ono were undergoing at the time, Lennon revenges every anger, every slight, every insult he experienced as a member of the moptops. In the searing exchange that lends the book its title, Lennon tells Wenner, "One has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were, and that's what I resent. I did it, but I didn't know, I didn't foresee that, it just happened bit by bit til this complete craziness is surrounding you. And you're doing exactly what you don't want to do with people you can't stand -- the people you hated when you were ten. And that's what I'm saying in this album [Plastic Ono Band], I'm saying, 'I remember what it's all about now, you fuckers, fuck you all.' That's what I'm saying, 'Fuck you all. You don't get me twice!'"

It is a function of Lennon's intrinsic honesty that he doesn't come out unscathed from his own interview. At times his dismantling of the Beatles myth is so total that he seems to believe there was nothing good about the band or his relationship with its other members. He can seem mean-spirited and judgmental. He slings the word "fag" around with impunity, notably when making fun of Mick Jagger's "fag dancing." And the most disturbing section comes when he's discussing the Beatles' byzantine business problems. McCartney wanted Linda Eastman's father, John Eastman, a noted New York lawyer, to sort the issues out, while Lennon backed Allen Klein, who also handled the Rolling Stones. After first pointing out that Eastman had changed his family name and "we all know Eastman's name is Epstein," Lennon again lets his temper flare, "They're fuckin' bastards, they're -- Eastman's a WASP Jew, man! And that's the worst kind of Jew on earth, that's the worst kind of WASP too -- he's a WASP Jew, can you imagine it!"

Can you "imagine" it, indeed -- the word choice is ironically telling. Those are hardly the words of the man who has become, since his death, a kind of saint of tolerance and world peace. In many ways, Lennon is just as suffused in myth as the Beatles. But Lennon Remembers goes a long way towards restoring reality to a fantasy world that persists to this day. And there is still nothing to rival this interview in the annals of rock journalism -- it has lost none of its power to shock. In these oversensationalized and strangely desensitized times, that's saying something.