Richard Lloyd Television guitarist death, Digi Mart USA News (Chattanooga, Tennessee): Richard Lloyd, co-founding guitarist of Television and an architect of post-punk, has died at the age of 75. Lloyd revealed in August that he had been diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a serious form of bile duct cancer.
According to Rolling Stone, he passed away Saturday morning at his home in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Lloyd was best known as one of the musical minds behind the 1970s punk band and an artist with enough musicality to stand on his own, having released nine well-received solo albums over a 50-year career.
Growing up in Pittsburgh before moving to New York, Lloyd picked up the guitar as a teenager and learned alongside Velvert Turner, who claimed to be a friend and guitar student of Jimi Hendrix, though that assertion is generally regarded as unlikely. Lloyd believed the tale, positioning himself as an understudy of Hendrix through Turner, and even said Hendrix punched him backstage after he accidentally insulted the Stratocaster wielder.
Lloyd was an influential figure in the nascent New York punk scene of the mid-1970s, devising a guitar style that injected the movement’s raw, aggressive string work with harmonic complexity and a more thoughtful approach. He joined Richard Hell, Tom Verlaine and Billy Ficca in 1973 to solidify Television’s lineup, with Hell leaving in 1975 and being replaced by Fred Smith.
Lloyd’s guitar playing was instrumental in the band carving out a place in the CBGB cohort.
CBGB, the famous club that nurtured punk rock in its early years, may not have become the haven it grew into without Lloyd. The guitarist has claimed over the years that he was the spark behind CBGB becoming a punk club after stumbling across the newly opened venue and working with Television’s manager at the time to secure a gig there in 1974.
Other punk bands, musicians and outsider artists, including The Ramones, Blondie, The Talking Heads and Patti Smith, followed.
In a 2007 interview, Lloyd said, “CBGBs is the most famous rock ‘n’ roll club to have ever existed and I fucking created it! I was the invisible force behind it.” He described what he did at CBGB as akin to putting on a three-year-long party “I threw along with my friends and all those other bands that would otherwise have day jobs if it weren’t for me.”
His guitar playing and the mark it made on punk are a more measurable legacy. On the opening title track of Television’s debut album Marquee Moon, Lloyd’s lead work and rare use of power chords in a genre that relied on them created a template for angular melodies, harmonic dissonance and off-kilter playing that influenced post-punk bands such as Fugazi and groups such as R.E.M.
and The Pixies.
Television, with Lloyd as an integral part, left an outsized impression for a band that lasted from 1973 to 1978 in its initial run and released two albums. The band reunited in the 1990s and released a self-titled album before going on hiatus and reuniting again in the 2000s.
Lloyd left the band on good terms in 2007 to pursue his own music.
Lloyd found critical success as a solo artist with his 1986 album Field of Fire and its follow-up the next year, Real Time. Music journalists praised his distinct guitar chops and the unique sound palette his skill created for his songs.
He also became a go-to musician for power-pop songwriter Matthew Sweet, playing on his seminal 1991 album Girlfriend and many others. He toured and recorded throughout the 2000s, releasing his last album, The Countdown, in 2018.
Despite his influence on musicians and bands and his clear love for his instrument and for crafting songs, Lloyd said in a 2000 interview that he did not aspire to become a musician. “I’m a musician by refusing to grow up, and not wanting to undertake any of the other disciplines that might have been necessitated by having a goal,” Lloyd said.
“I lived in absolute terror of growing up, and I found the one thing that you could actually do and do well and it prevented you from growing up.”
