(Credits: Far Out / Elektra Records)
When Television helped birth the punk rock movement in New York in the mid-1970s, the band had little in the way of familiar punk tropes. Guitarists Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd weaved their spikes guitar lines in and out of each, with distortion and aggression being kept to the side. Television were always closer to art rock, which meant they didn’t have the same dedication to destruction as some of their punk peers.
Lloyd probably represented that feeling the best. A manic mix between George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix, Sterling Morrison, and Zoot Horn Rollo, Lloyd was able to tap into the experimental side of the electric guitar while still being rooted in the traditional rock medium. Through his friendship with Velvet Turner, who was allegedly a close friend of Hendrix’s, Lloyd channelled Hendrix’s influence into something completely different.
“Well, first of all, he’s much more melodic than people give him credit for,” Lloyd told Indy Week in 2017. “Two, there’s a certain vertical knowledge of the guitar one needs to have and start with. John Lee Hooker once told me, ‘I’ll tell you the secret of playing the electric guitar’.”
“What he said to me was, ‘Take off all the strings but one, and learn one string up and down and down and up, until the girls go, ‘Woooo!’ Then put on a second string and play those two strings up and down, and down and up and shake ’em and bend ’em until the women go ‘Woooo!’’ and the men go ‘Aaaaaah.’ And by the time you get to six, you’ll be a great guitarist.’”
According to Lloyd, it was Hendrix’s physical approach to the electric guitar that helped him stand out. Whereas most guitarists would typically approach the guitar horizontally, Hendrix had a different orientation in mind when he played.
“Jimi played vertically, which is what differentiated him from all the English blues guitarists who played in, it’s called positional play, where your wrist doesn’t move beyond your board,” Lloyd explained.
“He had huge hands, and sure, he used the thumb to build chords, either by playing the low E string with his thumb or even the A string,” Lloyd added. “I don’t have big hands. Neither does Jimmy Page. And we both seem to do well with it. But they’re not teeny either.”
Check out ‘See No Evil’ down below.
