I read the news today, oh boy...

I cried when I heard the news that John Lennon had been killed in front of his apartment building in New York. It was December 8, 1980 and I was only 14, but I was already a big Beatles fan.

I was just starting to learn to play the guitar while my older brother Arnel and my best friend Tito, two years younger than me and living right next door to us, had been playing for some time already, and we had been spending many afternoons and weekends singing Beatles songs out of the red Jingle Beatles Songbook that we had bought.

Lennon and his bandmates Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were our heroes, and in our young minds no group could hold a candle to them. We memorized their songs and Arnel and Tito could play many of them on guitar; I struggled through most of them and would not be able to play them with any proficiency until a year later when I became more serious about guitar.

I was also beginning to learn how and why the Beatles broke up, and in my mind I identified with Lennon because he seemed the most misunderstood. At 14 I was beginning to feel the confusion and alienation that many teenagers go through, and in a strange way it felt better that I could sing songs like “Imagine” – with its atheistic but ultimately optimistic lyrics – to chase my blues away. Here, I thought, was a man who understood my angst. And he was wearing glasses like me!

Ironically, Lennon died at a time when he was just getting over his “misunderstood” period and was beginning to revive his career. He had just gotten back with his wife Yoko Ono, he had just released his album “Double Fantasy,” and he was doing some more recordings. In fact, he was coming home from a recording session when Mark David Chapman came up to him and shot him…