Official Beatles Bible to Set Helter-Skelter Record Straight

Thirty years after they went their own ways, the three surviving Beatles have written a book setting the record straight about the “Fab Four,” Paul McCartney’s spokesman said Sunday.

McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr have spent six years writing the 360-page “Beatles Anthology,” to be published in Britain and the United States in the fall.

The book will provide the frankest account of how the band ruled the pop world in the 1960s.

“We’re talking a huge volume of work, it’s encyclopedic--it weighs something like 2 kilos [4.4 pounds],” McCartney spokesman Geoff Baker said.

The Sunday Telegraph newspaper said the book will sell for about $80.

Yoko Ono, the widow of John Lennon--the Beatle who was shot to death in New York City in 1980--will receive a quarter share of the profits, the newspaper said.

“It will dispel some of the myths . . . as every Tom, Dick and uncle of a friend has been writing books on the Beatles since 1963,” the newspaper quoted McCartney as saying.

Among other things, the book will counter the widely held belief that McCartney wanted the band to split up. Lennon was actually the first to walk away, Baker said, leaving McCartney to make the official announcement in 1970.

The book also says that in 1996, the three surviving Beatles turned down a $175-million offer to perform 17 concerts in the U.S., Germany and Japan, according to the newspaper.