Richard Lloyd, the co-founder and guitarist whose signature intricate playing helped set Television apart from the first wave of punk rock, has died at 75.
Lloyd died Saturday morning, Nov. 7, at his home in Chattanooga, Tennessee, his family told Rolling Stone. His wife, Sheila, and his dog, Willie Mays, were by his side. The cause was cholangiocarcinoma, a bile duct cancer he had been diagnosed with in March.
Lloyd never hid what he wanted out of music. He once said he didn’t get into it for the money, but to become a “renowned guitarist who’s made an irrevocable impact on rock & roll history,” as he told The Stranger in 2015. Few would argue he didn’t get there.
Born in Pittsburgh and raised largely in New York City, Lloyd started on drums before switching to guitar. He came up playing alongside musicians with deep roots, from a Brooklyn guitarist mentored by Jimi Hendrix to blues legend John Lee Hooker, whom he played with in Boston. After returning to New York in 1973, he was introduced to Tom Verlaine. Lloyd sensed right away that each had what the other was missing, and Television was born.
Although Television became a fixture of New York’s influential punk scene in the 1970s, the band never quite sounded like its contemporaries. While many punk bands of the era stuck to loud, fast power chords, Lloyd and Verlaine built something more intricate, weaving their guitars together with flourishes borrowed from jazz and art rock. That sound defined the band’s 1977 debut, Marquee Moon, which became a cornerstone of punk’s first wave.
Much of the album’s richness came from Lloyd’s instincts in the studio. He pushed to double-track his most intricate parts so the record would sound bigger than a band playing live in a room. On “Guiding Light,” he layered eight separate guitar tracks.
His road wasn’t easy. Television broke up in 1978, and Lloyd later wrote openly about his struggles with addiction before getting sober in 1984. He went on to release a string of solo albums, work as a session musician for artists including Matthew Sweet and X’s John Doe, and teach guitar. He rejoined Television for its 1992 reunion and again in the early 2000s.
Tom Verlaine died in 2023. With Lloyd’s passing, the two guitarists who built Television’s sound are both gone, but the music they made together still holds its place in rock history, just as Lloyd hoped it would.
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