Richard Lloyd died on Saturday morning at his home in Chattanooga, Tennessee, at 75. Rolling Stone confirmed the death, and his family said he had been diagnosed in March with cholangiocarcinoma, a serious form of bile duct cancer. Lloyd had revealed the diagnosis publicly in August. He turned 75 on October 25, less than two weeks before his death.
“His loving wife Sheila and his dog Willie Mays were with him at the end,” his family said in a statement reported by Rolling Stone.
Two guitars, one argument
Lloyd was born in Pittsburgh on October 25, 1951, and learned guitar as a teenager from Velvert Turner, who claimed to have been a protégé of Jimi Hendrix — a claim generally regarded as unlikely, and one Lloyd believed anyway. He carried that secondhand Hendrix schooling to New York, where in 1973 Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell and Billy Ficca recruited him as Television’s second guitarist. Hell left in 1975 and was replaced by bassist Fred Smith; the four who remained made the records.
Television were not a normal punk band, and Lloyd is a large part of why. Punk ran on power chords. Lloyd and Verlaine mostly refused them, building songs out of two melodic lines that interrupted, answered and circled each other. On the title track of Marquee Moon — released by Elektra on February 8, 1977 — the two guitars sit in separate channels, left and right, so a listener can follow either line alone and hear exactly how the parts lock. Consequence, in its obituary, put the influence plainly: Lloyd’s lead work on that track created the template for the angular melodies and harmonic dissonance of post-punk bands like Fugazi, and swayed groups such as R.E.M. and the Pixies.
The band built its following at CBGB, the East Village club where New York punk coalesced. Lloyd spent years claiming a bigger share of that history than the record usually gives him — that he was the one who talked the club into becoming a punk room in the first place. “CBGB’s is the most famous rock ’n’ roll club to have ever existed and I fucking created it,” he said in a 2007 interview quoted by Consequence. “I was the invisible force behind it.” Whether or not the claim survives scrutiny, the band it was made about does: the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads and Patti Smith all came through the room Television helped make famous.
After Television
Television released Adventure in 1978 and disbanded, returned for a self-titled album in 1992, and reunited again in the 2000s. Lloyd left on good terms in 2007. Verlaine died in 2023.
Lloyd’s own catalog is bigger than the sideman label suggests. He released nine solo albums across five decades, beginning with Alchemy in 1979 and running through Field of Fire (1986) to his last, The Countdown, in 2018. He was Matthew Sweet’s go-to guitarist, playing on Sweet’s landmark Girlfriend in 1991 and many records after it, and he worked as a session player and teacher in New York. His memoir, Everything Is Combustible: Television, CBGB’s and Five Decades of Rock and Roll, came out in 2018.
He said in a 2000 interview, quoted by Consequence, that he was a musician by default: “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.” It reads like a joke. The work — one album that has never been out of print, and a guitar language other bands are still speaking — says he had a goal the whole time.
The rest of the day in music
- Future, Drake, Travis Scott and Loe Shimmy, “Ya Hit” — the surprise single that reunited Drake and Travis Scott for the first time since “Meltdown” is already covered live on Previously: the “Ya Hit” story
- Skepta, The Fork and Knife — his first solo album in seven years is already covered live on Previously: the Skepta story
- B2K, Eclipse — the group’s first album in nearly 24 years, released Friday.
- Lil Baby, Fresh — his fifth studio album arrived Friday (17 tracks; “Dead Fresh” peaked at No. 18 on the Hot 100). No first-week numbers yet; the desk re-grades it when the Billboard 200 receipts land.
- Amy Winehouse, Back to Black — the 20th-anniversary reissue returned the album to the top 10 on four Billboard charts (No. 3 Indie Store Album Sales, No. 4 Vinyl Albums, No. 7 Top Album Sales and Top R&B Albums; No. 42 on the Billboard 200) on 16,000 units, up 185%.
Sources · 7 sources
- Consequence — “Richard Lloyd, Television Guitarist, Dead at 75” (Nov 7, 2026); the CBGB and 2000-interview quotes in this story come via Consequence
- Stereogum — “Television’s Richard Lloyd Dead At 75” (Nov 7, 2026)
- SPIN — “Television’s Richard Lloyd Dies At 75” (Nov 7, 2026)
- Far Out Magazine — “Television co-founder Richard Lloyd dead aged 75” (Nov 7, 2026)
- Rolling Stone — death confirmation and family statement, as reported by Stereogum and Consequence (Nov 7, 2026)
- Billboard, via WDZZ-FM — “Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black Returns to Billboard’s Top 10 Charts After 20th Anniversary Reissue” (Nov 7, 2026)
- Universal Music Canada — “Lil Baby Drops Highly Anticipated New Album FRESH” (Nov 6, 2026)
