Richard Lloyd, Television Co-Founder and Guitarist, Dies at 75

Richard Lloyd, the guitarist who co-founded the New York band Television, died on Saturday morning at his home in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He was 75.

His family told The New York Times that the cause was cholangiocarcinoma, a form of bile duct cancer, and that he was diagnosed in March. "His loving wife Sheila and his dog Willie Mays were with him at the end," the family said. Rolling Stone also reported that Lloyd died at home on Saturday morning.

The Television years

Lloyd was born on October 25, 1951, in Pittsburgh and was raised in New York. He first played drums, then switched to guitar after what he later called a hallucinatory experience, a story he told in his 2018 memoir, Everything Is Combustible: Television, CBGB's and Five Decades of Rock and Roll. He dropped out of high school, moved to Boston and played alongside blues singer John Lee Hooker before returning to New York, where he saw Tom Verlaine playing in a club and the two began working together.

In 1973 Lloyd joined with Verlaine, Richard Hell and Billy Ficca in the lineup that became Television. Hell left in 1975 and was replaced by Fred Smith. Lloyd said for years that he helped turn CBGB into a punk club after finding the newly opened venue and working with the band's manager to book Television there in 1974. The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads and Patti Smith followed the band into the club.

Television released Marquee Moon in 1977 and Adventure in 1978, then split at the end of their first run that year. Lloyd's lead playing on the title track of Marquee Moon, built on interlocking lines with Verlaine and very few of the power chords punk ran on, became a template for post-punk bands such as Fugazi and influenced groups including R.E.M. and the Pixies. The band reunited in the 1990s and released a third album, Television, in 1992. Lloyd left the group on good terms in 2007.

Solo work and illness

Lloyd released nine solo albums across a 50 year career. Field of Fire came out in 1986 and Real Time followed in 1987. He became a regular collaborator of power pop songwriter Matthew Sweet and played on Sweet's 1991 album Girlfriend and on many of his other records. His last album, The Countdown, was released in 2018.

He revealed in August 2026 that he had been diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma in March. USA Today reported at the time that he had tumours in his liver, including one near a major blood vessel that doctors could not safely remove, and that he had been admitted to intensive care seven times, with sepsis twice and complications involving his kidneys and liver. A fundraiser set up by a bandmate sought help with medical bills and living costs after the illness stopped him touring. "I am usually a pretty upbeat person and I am taking this in stride, but it has become very difficult on our own and financially we are strapped. That's why I'm asking for your help," Lloyd wrote at the time.