Richard Lloyd, the Television guitarist behind Marquee Moon, has died aged 75

Richard Lloyd, the guitarist who co-founded Television and whose lines wove through the band's 1977 debut Marquee Moon, died on Saturday 7 November 2026 at his home in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He was 75. His family has confirmed his death.

Lloyd was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a cancer of the bile ducts, in March this year. He went public with his illness in the summer. His wife Sheila and his dog were with him at the end, the family said.

The other half of the twin guitars

Lloyd was born in Pittsburgh on 25 October 1951 and grew up in New York, where a school friend taught him his first chords. In 1973 he joined Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell and drummer Billy Ficca to form Television, who became one of the defining bands of the CBGB scene alongside the Ramones, Patti Smith and Blondie.

If you are meeting Television for the first time, the thing to know is that they were not a punk band in the three-chord sense. Verlaine and Lloyd played interlocking, ringing, sharply angled guitar parts, with one lead line passing to the other mid-phrase. Marquee Moon, released by Elektra in 1977, is the record where that conversation runs longest, and it is still the one guitar bands are measured against. Fred Smith had replaced Hell on bass by then.

The band followed it with Adventure in 1978 and split that year. They returned with a self-titled album in 1992 and played together on and off until Lloyd left in 2007.

A long second act

Lloyd's solo career began with Alchemy in 1979 and ran to nine albums, the last of them The Countdown in 2018. He was also a sought-after sideman, playing on records by Matthew Sweet, including Girlfriend, and by X's John Doe. He wrote openly about addiction and recovery, and in 2018 published a memoir, Everything Is Combustible, about Television, CBGB and five decades in rock and roll. In later years he taught guitar from his studio in New York.

His death comes three years after Verlaine died in 2023. Both founding guitarists of one of rock's most influential bands are now gone, which makes the interlocking solos of Marquee Moon and its title track feel even more like a single, finished conversation.