Friction on the Bowery, Richard Lloyd of Television Dies at 75

Richard Lloyd, the guitarist who co-founded Television in New York in 1973 and played the interlocking lines on the band's 1977 debut Marquee Moon, died on Saturday, November 7, at his home in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He was 75. The cause was cholangiocarcinoma, a cancer of the bile ducts.

The last public document of his life is a fundraising page. The GoFundMe that his bassist Sean Seymour set up in August, with Lloyd's wife Sheila as co-organizer, still carries his own words on Monday morning. "I am usually a pretty upbeat person and I am taking this in stride, but it has become very difficult on our own," Lloyd wrote there. The page says he was diagnosed in March, that a tumor sat too close to a major blood vessel for surgeons to remove, and that he had been in intensive care seven times.

Television announced the death on its Instagram account. "We are so very sad that Richard Lloyd has today passed away at the age of 75," the band wrote, according to Guitar Player, which also reported that Sheila and the couple's dog, Willie Mays, were with him at the end.

Who Was Richard Lloyd?

Lloyd was born in Pittsburgh on October 25, 1951, according to Guitar.com, which means he died 13 days after his 75th birthday. In 1973 he joined Tom Verlaine, then still going by Tom Miller, the bassist Richard Hell and the drummer Billy Ficca to form Television. Fred Smith replaced Hell on bass in 1975.

The band was one of the first to take a regular night at CBGB, the room Hilly Kristal opened on the Bowery in 1973. The street around it has since been turned into a museum exhibition, but in the middle of the 1970s it was the place where a scene was still being invented one set at a time. Patti Smith, the Ramones and Blondie came up beside Television. Television did not sound like any of them.

Where most of the Bowery was cutting songs down, Television stretched them out. The two guitars did not split into rhythm and lead. Lloyd and Verlaine traded lines, crossed them and handed solos back and forth. The title track of Marquee Moon runs about ten minutes, and it is still the record people reach for when they want to explain what two guitars can do in a rock band.

Television did not sound like any of them.

What Did He Leave on Record?

Lloyd kept his own discography on his website, a plain page that has not been updated in years. We counted what it lists. It credits him on six Television releases. Three are the studio albums, Marquee Moon in 1977 and Adventure in 1978 on Elektra and Television in 1992 on Capitol. Three are live sets, The Blow Up, Live at the Academy and Live at the Old Waldorf.

The same page lists six solo albums, running from Alchemy on Elektra to The Jamie Neverts Story in 2009. His page dates Alchemy to 1980. Most obituaries say 1979. Two later records, Rosedale in 2016 and The Countdown in 2018, are missing from the page because it stops in 2009. Obituaries put his total at nine solo records. We could confirm eight by title.

The session list is longer than the solo list. By our count, the page names six Matthew Sweet releases with Lloyd on guitar, from Earth in 1990 through Girlfriend, Altered Beast, Son of Altered Beast and 100% Fun to the 2000 collection Time Capsule. It also lists work with John Doe of X, Chris Stamey and Stephan Eicher, plus a 2004 album, Rocket Redux, with Rocket from the Tombs.

How Did Television's Lineup Come to an End?

Television split in July 1978, came back from 1991 to 1993 and reunited again in 2001. Lloyd left in 2007, and Jimmy Rip took his place. Counting the three stints, Lloyd played about 13 years in the band he helped start.

The deaths came close together. Verlaine died in Manhattan on January 28, 2023, at 73. Fred Smith died on Thursday, February 5, 2026, at 77, as Ultimate Classic Rock reported. Lloyd died on November 7.

By our count, 1,104 days passed between Verlaine's death and Smith's, and 275 days between Smith's and Lloyd's. Three of the four men in the 1977 Elektra publicity photo.jpg) above this story died within 1,379 days of one another. Billy Ficca stands at the far left of that picture.

After Verlaine's death, Guitar.com reported, Lloyd described himself as the last functioning member of the band and started playing Television songs live again after years of leaving them alone. In an interview with Guitar World that Guitar.com quotes, he put his ambition plainly. "I wanted to make a dent in rock history," he said. "That was my goal, and that came true."

What Happened After the Diagnosis?

The illness ended the touring that paid his bills. "For a working musician, that's devastating, not only because performing is what he loves, but because touring is his primary source of income," Seymour wrote on the fundraising page. Guitar World, writing on August 25, reported that the campaign stood just short of $69,000 against a goal of $80,000.

When we read the page on November 9, it showed $137,396 raised toward a goal that now reads $150,000, from 1,568 donors. By our arithmetic, that is an average gift of about $88, and almost twice what had come in by late August. The page is dated August 21, which puts the fundraiser 78 days before his death.

Lloyd had made his home in Chattanooga for years. Chattanooga's NewsChannel 9 reported in August that Chattanooga musicians Terry Clouse and Jeff Brakebill played on Rosedale. His memoir, Everything Is Combustible, about Television, CBGB and five decades of rock and roll, came out in 2017, and his own news page records him reading from it at the Decatur Book Festival that September. The same page lists a December 2, 2017, show at the Bowery Ballroom, a few blocks from where it all started.

What Comes Next?

The tributes arrived fast. "R.I.P Richard Lloyd. A seeker and finder and a true inspiration with and without the guitar," Johnny Marr of the Smiths wrote on Instagram. Lloyd Cole wrote on X that he had seen Television once and that the riffs that drive the songs were all Lloyd's.

None of the reports we read mention a memorial date. The fundraising page was still open on Monday. Its organizers wrote that the money was meant for medical bills and monthly living expenses for Richard and Sheila.

On the Bowery the old CBGB name is a trademark now, and its owner has talked about one day opening a club again, as we noted when the CBGB Festival washed out in September. If a room ever opens under that name, the first two guitars it has to answer to are on Marquee Moon.