New York guitarist with mythical band Television, and now with resurrected Cleveland legends Rocket From The Tombs, Richard Lloyd speaks of the rock and roll circus, being caned by David Thomas, and finding Cheetah Chrome at a Nashville sushi bar.

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Cosmik: Why, after some thirty years, do we have one of the unlikeliest of reunions: Rocket From The Tombs?

Richard: I got an email from Cheetah [Chrome] to participate, replacing Peter Laughner, who's long dead, since they got back together to rehearse, and found they missed having another guitarist. It's patchwork hindsight. Apparently RFTT bootlegs were something of a thriving business. Cheetah bought one on E-Bay and the tapes were commanding a pretty hefty price. In any case, David Thomas thought the bootlegs didn't sound very good, and he wanted to track down the original tapes, so the band could officially release it, and that's exactly what happened with When the Earth Met RFTT, a pastiche of different live takes and some rehearsal studio demos. It got a very good reception, not surprisingly. David had a festival in LA of various bands he had been involved with and the organizers, needing an opener for Pere Ubu, suggested RFTT. Cheetah and David began talking about it. They found Craig Bell in Indianapolis, and got together and rehearsed, and decided to look for another guitarist. I jumped at the chance. I really wanted to see it happen.

Cosmik: What is your connection to Cheetah?

Richard: The original guitarist Peter Laughner was also a journalist in Cleveland. He used to come to New York once in a while, and really fell in love with the CBGB's scene, and Television in particular. He talked us into coming to Cleveland to play. Television had never been outside of New York, so it was kinda interesting for us. He offered to have RFTT open the show. So Television went off to Cleveland for two nights, a place called the Piccadilly Inn. That's where I met Cheetah and David and the rest. They were quite an act ... in the middle of breaking up as it happens. They practically had fist fights during soundcheck. I was disappointed that they broke up. Soon after I heard the first Pere Ubu (David Thomas' next band) single "Final Solution / 30 Seconds Over Tokyo" - two RFTT songs, which was pretty good though the RFTT versions were much harder. Then Cheetah formed the Dead Boys and they did a couple of RFTT songs like "Sonic Reducer." They used to drive up to New York and play CBGB's. Eventually Cheetah moved to New York and Hilly (Krystal) who owned CBGB's became their manager. So I used to see Cheetah all the time. CBGB's was like throwing a party for four years and you were the host. We became pretty good friends. Then he disappeared. One day we were on tour and I was in a sushi bar in Nashville, and by god there's Cheetah sitting at the bar. Turned out he had moved to Nashville after Guns and Roses did a couple of his songs, and he made some money off that. He's been in Nashville ever since.

Cosmik: That was almost thirty years ago!

Richard: I don't think in those terms. It seemed unfathomable that we'd live to see 1999!

Cosmik: That has to be the dawn of punk.

Richard: Dawn of something. It wasn't called punk then.

Cosmik: Did punk originate in Cleveland in 1974?

Richard: I would argue that point. There was stuff happening in New York in '74 as well. You also have people shout you down and claim it came out of England. What do they know? They wrote the books. It's all ass-backwards.

Cosmik: Is Television still an ongoing entity?

Richard: Yes, we're still playing.

Cosmik: What about recording?

Richard: Pretty thin. We're the least motivated rock and roll people. When bands say "we don't care," it's kind of a mantra, but with Television we actually don't care. We're lazy.

Cosmik: Was the Rocket Redux release basically your idea?

Richard: It was really a fan's idea. We did that one show in Los Angeles, and it went over very well, standing ovations well, then we did eleven shows on the East coast and every time we played people would come up and ask if we had anything recorded by this current version of the band. Then we were offered a radio broadcast in New Jersey and were thinking maybe we could turn that into a merchandise only item for the tour we were planning. I have a studio in New York and I said to the guys that the session sounded ok but I could do a better job - record the set in a real studio, and we'd have something that would stand up a little better. So that's what happened. It wound up sounding better than anticipated and we thought it would be a shame to hold it just as a merchandise item. So we went to Smog Veil, who released the previous record and here it is. They've done a terrific job for a small label.

Cosmik: Wasn't there an inclination to record directly off the soundboard if the fans were so eager for product?

Richard: Sure, that's an idea, but most of those recordings are not always what they're cracked up to be. There's actually a company who records your set and five minutes after you come off stage they have it all pressed and ready to go.

Cosmik: How is it playing live with those guys?

Richard: It's an explosive experience for sure. It's real hard work. I don't think of it as punk rock. More like Alice Cooper meets Led Zeppelin via the MC5. It's cantankerous, nihilistic, explosive, devastating rock.

Cosmik: When you say explosive - has there been some nastiness on stage?

Richard: No, not between band members on stage.

Cosmik: So it's all pretty kosher these days?

Richard: I don't know if I can say that either. It's a very volatile mix of personalities. Carting these guys around to gigs is like carrying nitro-glycerine: you never know what's gonna cause it to go off. But on stage, David has a chair and he has a cane. The first time he came towards me with that cane I felt threatened. I thought he was gonna whack me! But that's just his exuberance. The audiences however - we had to read them the riot act a couple of times. You know, a mosh pit is one thing, but when things get thrown on stage - there have been one or two shows where we've had to leave the stage cuz people went berserk.

Cosmik: What kind of audiences are you getting?

Richard: All mixed. You get the guitar people, young college kids getting into it through another angle, the die hard punks with the spiked hair, and then you get the pretty people.

Cosmik: Uh, right. In what towns did the people get out of hand? I need specifics.

Richard: Austin and Toronto I think.

Cosmik: Maybe you were wearing your "please kill me" t-shirt.

Richard: Oh, gawd no. I only wore that once. And afterwards a couple of guys came up to me all bug-eyed and said they could help me out. I gave it to Richard Hell.

Cosmik: Is RFTT over or do you have more recording plans?

[Pictured: David Thomas]

Richard: We're a long distance band. David's in England, I'm in New York, Cheetah's in Nashville, Craig's in Indianapolis and Steve, the drummer, is in Cleveland. People are putting ideas on CDs and sending them back and forth. We have some shows in Europe in the fall, so we'll see. I certainly would like it to continue, and so would everyone else, but it's a very, very dangerous mix of people. So who knows. David's not kidding when he says, "see how it goes cuz you don't know when you'll have another chance."

Cosmik: Was Television your first musical venture?

Richard: Television was my first professional band. I had some demos and was thinking of putting a band together. My friend Terry York wanted to manage a band. One day we saw Tom Verlaine perform solo, and I turned to Terry and said, "you should put Tom and me together and you'll have the band you're looking for. Hook us up, I can augment what he's doing perfectly. There's something special there." I went to see Claude Nobs, the founder of the Montreaux Jazz Festival, who was in New York at the time, and asked him about my songs and Tom's band. He's the one who convinced me that I should join them.

Cosmik: That must have been an exciting time.

Richard: It was like running off and joining the circus.

Cosmik: Did you realize what was happening, that you were part of something monumental?

Richard: I knew I was part of something big. I knew I was something big. If you don't have that sense, that you are participating in something that is astonishing, then the likelihood of your succeeding is very, very small. When playing, you look to your sides and say, "how did this happen, did a flying saucer land and say 'let's take you to the rock and roll circus'..." If that isn't happening then you should be doing something else.

Cosmik: Do you teach guitar?

Richard: Sometimes.

Cosmik: Doesn't that go against the whole DIY ethic of punk rock?

Richard: I am not a punk rocker. You've got it mixed up. Nobody is a punk rocker. Punk rock is just a label. It wasn't part of our ethics. The whole idea was that we were trying awfully hard to become good at our instruments. What you're talking about is the "anybody can be in a band, you don't have to know how to play your instrument" mentality, which is really an English idea. It's a social, political rebellion. It had nothing to do with Americans.

Cosmik: Ouch, the myth is shattered.

Richard: Rock and roll is a pyramid game. First there was Elvis, that made one. Then the Beatles - that makes five. Then the Rolling Stones, that makes nine, and so on, until a third of the population, of the us, has a record out.

Cosmik: Are we going to have to wait another decade...

Richard: Probably.

Cosmik: Wait, I haven't asked the question yet.

Richard: Doesn't matter, the answer's yes.

Cosmik: Lemme participate: The next Television record.

Richard: There's no answer to your question.

© 2004 - John Sekerka