Richard Lloyd, guitarist for acclaimed NYC rockers Television, dead at 75
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Set us as preferred Richard Lloyd, the fiery guitarist of the influential New York rock band Television, has died.He was 75.
Lloyd died on Saturday in Chattanooga, Tenn., from cholangiocarcinoma, a bile duct cancer, according to a statement from Lloyd’s family to the New York Times.Lloyd’s contributions to Television — a proto-punk band with intricate hailstorms of guitar — helped make them one of the city’s most important if briefly tenured bands.
In a time when peers such as the New York Dolls and Velvet Underground were upending rock and roll with glamour and arty disaffection, Television fulfilled the genre’s promises of both swaggering virtuosity and restless reinvention.Lloyd, born Richard John Alt in Pittsburgh, moved to New York City with his mother and grew up in Greenwich Village.
He attended Manhattan’s acclaimed Stuyvesant High School, but dropped out to pursue music.Music Cameron Winter had one last knife to twist for the Dodger faithful in the audience at Hollywood Forever on Thursday night.
Television formed in 1973 after Lloyd met front man Tom Verlaine, then-bassist Richard Hell and drummer Billy Ficca through Terry Ork, an Andy Warhol scenester who managed the legendary film bookstore and memorabilia shop Cinemabilia, where Verlaine and Hell worked.The band was an outlier at the grimy local country and bluegrass dive bar CBGB (the members had to convince owner Hilly Kristal to book them).
Yet the group would help transform that club and Max’s Kansas City into hubs for punk bands and the avant-garde such as Blondie, the Ramones and Talking Heads.While sharing little in common with dueling-guitar acts such as the Allman Brothers Band or ’70s contemporaries the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, Television also drew its power from the preternatural rapport between Verlaine and Lloyd’s instrument...