Richard Lloyd, Television Guitarist Behind 'Marquee Moon', Dies at 75

Richard Lloyd, the guitarist whose interplay with Tom Verlaine defined Television's 1977 debut Marquee Moon, has died of cancer at 75. The album missed the US Billboard 200 entirely, yet it has since landed on countless "greatest albums of all time" lists — a gap between sales and stature that tells you most of what you need to know about Lloyd's career.

Marquee Moon, released in February 1977, provoked euphoria among critics who couldn't agree what to call it. Punk, art-rock, new wave, post-punk, progressive — the labels were all flung at it. The record peaked at No. 28 in the UK, but never charted in the band's own country. Critics routinely called it an "influence" on later acts, though as the obituary record notes, Television's music was too rare and sophisticated to imitate easily.

What made the Lloyd-Verlaine partnership work?

The mechanism was contrast. Lloyd started as a lead player, and Verlaine had to talk him into playing rhythm. "He'd say stuff like, 'Well, look at the Stones – Keith [Richards] just plays rhythm, and he's the backbone of it, and there has to be a backbone,'" Lloyd recalled. Integrating their contrasting styles — the twin-guitar weave audible throughout the Marquee Moon title track — became the band's signature. Lloyd cited the Rolling Stones, first seen on TV's Ed Sullivan Show, as a subliminal influence.

The follow-up, Adventure (1978), reached the UK Top 10 but again failed to chart in the US. The group disbanded, and Lloyd battled a heroin addiction he overcame in 1984.

Where did Lloyd come from?

Born in Pittsburgh, the son of John Alt and Virginia (nee Ewing) — a wristwatch seller and a restaurant "soda jerk" — he took his surname from his stepfather, David Lloyd, after his mother remarried and moved with him to New York. He discovered the guitar at seven, at a cousin's sleepover, and locked himself in the bathroom all night experimenting with it.

After a teenage turn on drums, he switched instruments for good. "An inner voice said, 'You need to play a melody instrument,'" he told interviewers later. "This was when I switched to electric guitar."

His education was unusually hands-on. Through his friend Velvert Turner, who was taking lessons with Jimi Hendrix, Lloyd learned Hendrix's technical tricks and met him a couple of times. He picked up further tips from Jimmy Page's guitar technician when Led Zeppelin passed through New York, saw the Doors, the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead live, and attended Woodstock in 1969.

He left Stuyvesant high school before graduation, dropped out again in New Jersey, and, as he told ZigZag magazine in 1978, "did the usual sort of vagabond 20-year-old trip around America" before landing back in New York, drawn by the scene around the New York Dolls and Suicide. In 1973 he joined Verlaine, Richard Hell and drummer Billy Ficca — the Neon Boys — and the band became Television, settling into its definitive lineup when Fred Smith (ex-Blondie) replaced Hell on bass in 1975.

Residencies at CBGB, previously a country, bluegrass and blues club, built a cult following for both band and venue. After the 1975 single "Little Johnny Jewel" on their own Ork Records, and demo sessions with Brian Eno for Island, Television signed to Elektra in 1976.

What does his catalog look like now?

Lloyd released nine solo albums, from Alchemy (1979) to The Countdown, played on Television's reunions in 1992 — which produced a third album, Television — and 2001, and declined the 2007 30th-anniversary tour of Marquee Moon. He sessioned for Matthew Sweet and John Doe of X, and produced Rocket from the Tombs and Jim Neversink. He favored the Fender Stratocaster: "A Strat asks you to play a certain way; it demands a certain grasp," he told Guitar Player.

He is survived by his wife, Sheila (nee O'Keefe), his son, Dylan, and his brother, Eric. His memoir, Everything Is Combustible (2018), remains the fullest account of a career whose most famous record sold modestly and echoed for decades.