Richard Lloyd, innovative and influential guitar player and founding member of essential punk band Television, will perform at MOTR Pub on Oct. 23.

Lloyd grew up in New York City, associating with the biggest rock and roll acts of the ‘60s and ‘70s in his teen years, hanging around concert halls and learning what it means to be a musician.

By 1973 he had joined with guitarist and vocalist Tom Verlaine to form Television alongside bassist Richard Hell and drummer Billy Ficca during a time in the New York rock scene that would become the first generation of punk. The band played regularly at the newly-opened CBGB at the center of the new movement, where they would find a following. Hell left the band and formed The Heartbreakers with Johnny Thunders of New York Dolls, and later Richard Hell and the Voidoids, but was replaced by Fred Smith before the The Heartbreakers’ debut record.

Television’s Marquee Moon was released in early 1977 and is widely recognized as one of greatest rock and roll records of all time and a high point in punk. While retaining the raw edge and energy of the new world they grew out of, Lloyd and Verlaine’s intricately interlocking guitar parts on songs like “Elevation” and title track “Marquee Moon,” along with the band’s orchestrated structures — that owe more to jazz or the great rock bands than the frenetic energy of punk — became a new standard that has never quite been repeated.

The band followed with Adventure (1978), but soon broke up. Lloyd went on solo with Alchemy in 1979. He’s also done session work for Jon Doe of L.A. punk band X, Matthew Sweet, including work on his cult favorite album Girlfriend and a reformed Rocket from the Tombs, among others in addition to production work.

Lloyd’s 2017 book Everything Is Combustible: Television, CBGB’s and Five Decades of Rock and Roll: The Memoirs of an Alchemical Guitarist tells his story.

Richard Lloyd plays MOTR Pub on Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. Info: motrpub.com.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Oct. 16 print edition.