The guitarist who helped turn a Bowery bar that booked country and bluegrass into the birthplace of New York punk, and whose torrential playing drove “Marquee Moon,” has died.
Richard Lloyd, co-founder and lead guitarist of the 1970s New York art-punk band Television, died Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026, at his home in Chattanooga, Tenn. He was 75.
His family announced the death in a statement to Rolling Stone, saying the cause was cholangiocarcinoma, a bile duct cancer diagnosed in March. “His loving wife Sheila and his dog Willie Mays were with him at the end,” the family said.
The illness had already taken his livelihood. Sean Seymour, bassist in the Richard Lloyd Group, launched a GoFundMe in August to cover treatment and living costs, writing that Lloyd had been in intensive care seven times, with complications affecting his liver and kidneys and two episodes of sepsis. Lloyd could no longer tour, his main source of income, and his wife, Sheila Lloyd, had stopped working to become his full-time caregiver.
A Bluegrass Bar and a Tall Tale
Television came together in New York in 1973, pairing Lloyd with Tom Verlaine on lead vocals and guitar, Richard Hell on bass and Billy Ficca on drums. Verlaine and Hell, born Thomas Miller and Richard Meyers, both worked at Cinemabilia, the movie-memorabilia shop run by Terry Ork, an Andy Warhol acolyte who became the band’s manager and brought Lloyd to see Verlaine play. Verlaine, Hell and Ficca had already run a group called the Neon Boys; the name changed once Lloyd joined.
The club that made them was close to an accident. By legend, Verlaine and Lloyd walked past CBGB in lower Manhattan, asked owner Hilly Kristal what the room showcased and were told “Country, Bluegrass and Blues” — the words behind the club’s name. They answered that their band played something like that. It did not.
Television got the booking anyway, and the Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads soon followed onto the same stage. Ork put out the band’s first single, “Little Johnny Jewel,” in 1975 on his own label. Hell left that year and was replaced by Fred Smith, formerly of Blondie. Elektra Records signed the group in 1976.
The Masterpiece That Missed the Charts
“Marquee Moon” landed in 1977, built on the conversation between Lloyd’s Stratocaster and Verlaine’s Jazzmaster and anchored by a title track that runs nearly 11 minutes. Critics have never stopped calling it a masterpiece — it placed No. 107 on Rolling Stone’s 2023 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
Lloyd poured himself into that record, stacking eight different guitar tracks on “Guiding Light.”
Sales never arrived at home. Neither “Marquee Moon” nor the 1978 follow-up, “Adventure,” cracked the Billboard 200, though in the U.K. the band scored three Top 40 singles and a Top 10 album, “Adventure,” which reached No. 7. Television split in 1978, shortly after “Adventure” was released.
Three Chords in the Bathroom
He was born Richard John Alt on Oct. 25, 1951, in Pittsburgh. His father, John Alt, sold wristwatches at a strip club; his mother, Virginia (Ewing) Alt, was a soda jerk. They split when Richard was an infant, and he took the surname of his stepfather, David Lloyd, after his mother remarried.
He attended the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and dropped out just before graduation.
Drums came first. After switching to guitar, Lloyd found an early partner in Velvert Turner, a Brooklyn musician who was taking lessons from Jimi Hendrix. He played in Boston with John Lee Hooker, spent time in Los Angeles and returned to New York in 1973, gravitating toward the scene around the New York Dolls.
He Got Sober and Kept Playing
Lloyd’s solo debut, “Alchemy,” followed in 1979. He wrote in his memoir, “Everything Is Combustible,” that heroin ruled his early 1980s. He got sober in 1984 and kept recording: “Field of Fire” in 1986, the live “Real Time” in 1987, “Lodestones” in 2010 and a final solo album, “The Countdown,” in 2018 — nine solo records in all.
He became a sought-after session player, working with Matthew Sweet and with X singer John Doe. Television regrouped for a self-titled album in 1992, and he stayed with the band until his departure in 2007, ahead of a “Marquee Moon” anniversary tour.
Lloyd is survived by his wife, Sheila; his son, Dylan; and his brother, Eric. Verlaine died in January 2023 and Smith in February, leaving Ficca as the only surviving member of the quartet that recorded “Marquee Moon.”
“I wanted to make a dent in rock history,” Lloyd told Guitar World earlier this year. That was the goal, he said, and it came true.