Lloyd - Everything Is Combustible: Television, CBGBs and Five Decades of Rock and Roll: The Memoirs of an Alechemical Guitarist

Copyright 2018 by Richard Lloyd
www.everythingiscombustible.com

Foreword 2018 by Bill Flanagan. Cover Photograph: Godlis Back Cover Photography: L-R. 1-3: Archive of Richard Lloyd. 4,5: Godlis. 6: Bobby Grossman. 7: Robert Stone. Inside Photography: i, 355 : Marcia Resnick. vi: Bobby Grossman. x, 46, 65, 399: Sheila Lloyd. xiv, 206, 278, 293, 301, 342: Godlis. 8, 19, 32, 68, 126, 237, 333: Archive of Richard Lloyd. 159: Danny Fields.

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Beech Hill titles are distributed to the book trade by New Leaf Distributing Company, Lithia Springs, Georgia

Everything Is Combustible media inquiries:
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The names and identifying characteristics of some incidental characters (persons) in this book have been changed.

Everything Is Combustible

To the memory of my grandparents
John and Catherine Ewing (Pa Pa and Me Ma)

To my loving wife, Sheila Lloyd,
my mother, Virginia Lloyd,
and my son, Dylan Lloyd

The generations roll along

I have known the guitarist and songwriter Richard Lloyd for more than thirty years, but no matter how well you think you know Richard, there is always another surprise. Once I was crossing Times Square when I ran into the photographer Bob Gruen doing a shoot with a group of dreadlocked musicians. Bob introduced me to the Wailers, Bob Marleys band. We talked for a few minutes before I said I had to run, I was meeting Richard Lloyd. Al Anderson, the Wailers guitarist said,

Richard Lloyd! The guitar player?

Thats right.

From Television?

Yes.

From Montclair High School?

Huh?

It turned out that the future guitarists of Television, the center of CBGBs, and the Wailers, center of reggae, started out as teenagers playing together in a New Jersey basement. I was witness to their coffee shop reunion. Richards influence appears where you least expect it.

Richard Lloyd is one of the most original thinkers I have ever known and he has faced down some of the worst demons. Since childhood he has lived on the line between inspiration and madness. He was institutionalized as a teenager, became a rock sensation in his mid-twenties, beat drug addiction through guts and discipline, and stayed sober for twenty yearsonly to backslide when it seemed like the coast was clear, a downward spiral that cost him his marriage, many of his friendships, his band and almost his life. That he pulled himself up from the bottom and began again was more than inspiringit seemed impossible. Then again, a lot of Richards life seems impossible.

I have seen Richard at his best and worst, but this book surprised me again and again. It is a harrowing journey in which the supporting characters include not only criminals, quack psychiatrists, junkies and holy men, but Keith Moon, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, and the cast and crew of CBGBsa group with Richard at its bulls eye.

Richard has been a profound but often unrecognized influence on rock n roll. As co-founder of the great band Television he was a direct influence on dozens of acts, including U2 and R.E.M. Richard literally built the stage at CBGBs, where Television established a scene that soon included Patti Smith, the Ramones, Blondie, and Talking Heads and set off a musical revolution that spread around the world.

Richard Lloyds place in rock history was established before he was thirty years old, but his adventures continued. He made a series of fine solo albums and worked as a sideman and session musician. He married and raised a son. He explored spiritual and philosophical disciplines with a scholars attention. He worked in an office. He was a guitar teacher. He made background music for TV shows. He is the rare rock legend who has also lived for years as a civilian. He has always had a writers sensibility the gift for standing slightly outside himself and observing. Combine that with a photographic memory and an almost penitential honesty and you have the makings of a great memoir.

Richard Lloyd is a man who, when told by Keith Richards mother that his band would never be as great as her sons group, agreed with her and told her why: At the end of the day, Keith and I are organ grinders, and Keith has the best monkey.

That is the observation of a thinker, a wit andit turns outa vivid and compelling writer. Thats Richard Lloyd.

Bill Flanagan
New York, New York
April 2017

I have read my fair share of biographies and autobiographies and memoirs, many of them connected with rock n roll. Some biographies and autobiographies try my patience with fantastic genealogies; how so-and-sos greatgrandfather crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat with 39 cents and how he begat the grandfather who begat the father of the person whose biography I am reading. They also usually include how their ancestors met their respective spouses, what they did for a living and all manner of uninteresting (at least to me) set ups, to help me understand the roots of the person. I drag myself through these books waiting for the magical moment Im interested inwhen the person becomes aware of his destiny, how it approaches him, how it takes him for a ride and how he reacts to it. I usually know something about the person to begin withwhy else buy their biography? And I know the measure of their success or tragedy, or both.

I slog through the first third of the book like someone waiting in line to ride a rollercoaster. Im waiting for that moment when theyve been strapped in and there is no turning back. Thats the magic moment when the chain underneath grabs the car and starts to pull it up. The car reaches the top and slowly arches its way over into the freefall. Then come the ups and downs, changes in gravity, torquesometimes dangerous, sometimes exhilarating. The rollercoaster ride began for me when I was born on this lunatic asylum planet.

This book is a memoirnot an autobiography. Im not sure I know the difference but I can imagine that an autobiography traces a persons own history somewhat chronologically, factually, perhaps even objectively, whereas a memoir is based on first-person memory. Memory has its own rules, first of all that it is subjectiveno one else sees the objective events from the same perspective. Events on their own have no meaning. Human beings append meaning to events, and these meanings do not exist except invisibly, within each person. Autobiographies are meant to delineate a persons life; memoirs allow you to understand them a bit and to share their lives from the inside.