Richard Lloyd (guitarist) - Early Life

Early Life

Lloyd first became interested in music as a small child and would sit at the age of three or four at a small 28-key child's piano, playing notes and wondering where they went as the vibrations subsided. When he was a young teenager he spent his evenings with a transistor radio balanced on his ear and a pillow over his head, searching for intelligent life. When he saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and experienced the phenomenon of Beatlemania, his main interest was anthropological, wondering how four young men would cause mass hysteria worldwide the likes of which could only be matched by world wars. He followed the British Invasion back to its roots in American Blues and Jazz and listened to as much blues and jazz as he could find.

Lloyd attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City, which is a specialized science school considered to be one of the best public schools in the country. He attended the Be-ins and Love-ins in Central Park and even attended the Woodstock Festival and stayed awake for the entire three days, after being driven there by his stepfather. In his early teens he studied drums with William Kessler, who was the ghostwriter for Cozy Cole, one of the famous big-band drummers. But his cousins had also taught him three chords on the guitar, and after playing drums for 3½ years he had an auditory hallucination which told him to play a melody instrument. So he turned to the guitar. His first guitar was a Stratocaster, sold to him by one of his best friends older brothers for $2, which he saved up himself.