Richard Lloyd (guitarist)
| Richard Lloyd | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Richard Lloyd |
| Born |
October 25, 1951 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US |
| Genres | Rock |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, songwriter |
| Instruments | Guitar |
| Associated acts |
Television Matthew Sweet Rocket From the Tombs |
| Website | Official website |
Richard Lloyd (born October 25, 1951) is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, best known as a founding member of the rock band Television.
Lloyd first became interested in music as a small child. He saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and experienced the phenomenon of Beatlemania, later going on to follow the British Invasion back to its roots in Blues and Jazz.
Lloyd attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City, New York. In his early teens he studied drums with William Kessler, who was the ghostwriter for Cozy Cole, one of the famous big-band drummers. A few years later he turned to the guitar.
In his middle teens he met a scrawny black kid from Brooklyn named Velvert Turner who knew Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix considered Turner his "little brother", and took him on as his protégé, inviting him to various clubs and teaching him guitar from Jimi's apartment on W 12th St. As Velvert and Richard Lloyd were best friends, Velvert asked for permission to teach Lloyd what he was learning, and so Lloyd and Velvert began practicing together under the teaching auspice of Hendrix, and frequently attended his shows as well as those of other well-known acts such as Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart, The Allman Brothers Band, and the Grateful Dead.
At Stuyvesant High School, during the 11th grade, Lloyd decided that he was going to become a well-known guitarist, and so he stopped bringing his textbooks or homework to school, instead bringing an electric guitar in a hardshell case. When his teachers would ask him where his schoolbooks were, he would point to the case. Being asked to open the case, the teachers would proclaim "I don't see any books in there – only an electric guitar", and Lloyd's retort was "That's the book I'm studying." He still managed to pass all of his tests but quit in May 1969, before graduation, because he did not believe in diplomas, and he considered that having a high school diploma would not do him any good in his pursuit of the music business. That summer his parents moved to Montclair, New Jersey and gave him an ultimatum: he could either get a job or repeat the 12th grade in a new high school. He chose the latter, which led to his deep friendship with another guitarist named Al Anderson, who went on to be one of a couple of Americans to play in Bob Marley's touring band, The Wailers along with Donald Kinsey.
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Wikipedia