\n<\/p>\n
\n\tThe music world is in mourning Richard Lloyd<\/a>, the guitar virtuoso from Television<\/a>, the New York band that put CBGB on the map and kicked off the punk rock explosion. Lloyd made Television one of the all-time great guitar bands, in his tumultuous partnership with Tom Verlaine<\/a>. He died on Saturday<\/a>, at 75, after a fight with cancer. But he created a lifetime\u2019s worth of rock magic with Television, in classics like \u201cMarquee Moon,\u201d \u201cLittle Johnny Jewel,\u201d and \u201cDays.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTelevision barely stuck together for five years and two albums \u2014 yet that was enough to change how guitar music has sounded ever since. They never got a shot at American radio airplay, but they inspired upstarts all over the world, like R.E.M., U2, Sonic Youth, and Radiohead. Lloyd played so many of their most dazzling solos, as in \u201cElevation,\u201d \u201cGuiding Light,\u201d or \u201cSee No Evil,\u201d where his guitar sums up all the \u201cdestructive urges\u201d Verlaine sings about. You could devote your whole life to exploring Television live bootlegs, and some of us do.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tLloyd was always underrated \u2014 the George Harrison figure in Television, a couple of years younger than Verlaine, but constantly rebelling against his kid-brother status. He was the band\u2019s wild child, the chaotic rock & roll hellion with the face of a choirboy. Verlaine didn\u2019t touch drugs; Lloyd gobbled them up. Verlaine hated bars and clubs; Lloyd hated leaving. As he recalled in his memoir, \u201cI called myself a try-sexual at the time, because I would try anything a couple of times to see if I liked it. For a while, I supported myself as a male prostitute, just like Dee Dee Ramone, around the corner of 53rd and 3rd.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTelevision weren\u2019t built to last \u2014 not with these volatile personalities. \u201cI\u2019m already a manic depressive \u2013 bipolar A, as they say,\u201d Lloyd told Guitar World <\/em><\/a>earlier this year. \u201cEvery time we went into the studio, Tom would literally drive me nuts. He would act in such a way that I would end up in the mental hospital, or just the regular hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n