(TV) 'nother Lloyd interview

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http://www.eyeweekly.com/eye/issue/issue_05.17.07/music/streetspirit.php


StreetSpirit

By Liz Worth
SEE NO EVIL

HAMILTON  Richard Lloyd has the eyes of a fanatical genius.

On a May afternoon, one of the world's most underrated guitarists is pulling
teeth out of his pocket. Lloyd picks up one tooth, yellowed at the root with
a deep silver filling on the side, and tells me how it came to possess
Shamanic powers when he got it extracted with no anesthesia.

Is he in there, I wonder, as I study the deep scars on his arms and the gaps
in his mouth; is this what's become of Richard Lloyd?

Known more for his staggering work in Television than his solo career, Lloyd
is in Hamilton for a live-off-the-floor recording session at Grant Avenue,
the studio made famous by co-founder Daniel Lanois.

Guitar work isn't Lloyd's only talent; he's also a hypnotist, he says. He
recalls seeing The Beatles on TV in the 1960s and assessing the
sociological phenomenon of hypnosis that occurred.

It was an Earth event, you know? The little critters that crawl on the
cool, thin shell of the incredibly hot, fecund Mother Earth, who's really
liquid rock and metal with a large mass of molten iron and the 10 per cent
nickel in the middle, the yolk of the egg, is a magnet. After a pause, he
laughs and adds, You are in my power. Even if you're out of my power,
you're in it.

Before we can even start talking about Lloyd's new record, The Radiant
Monkey, he sets down three brass idols, lights some incense, and tries to
convince me that he's put me in a trance.

The Radiant Monkey, which comes out on Parasol later this year, is the
record Lloyd is leaving Television over. It's an album that, like his
previous solo work, focuses strongly on Lloyd's invincible guitar stylings,
although there are indications that he's coming into his own as a frontman.
This is the record, he adds, that will make him a household name in a year.
He's been engaged in warfare, he says, and has been assigned a phalange of
guardian angels. You see, Lloyd is on a spiritual mission.

But when his hands are suddenly trailing the curve up my calf and up my
thigh, it seems the righteous Lloyd has been distracted from his task. He
calls it exploring. Right.

It's hard to buy into all the beads, both Buddhist and rosary, that jangle
about his collarbone. That night as the session kicks off, though, my
skepticism wavers. Guitar in hand, Lloyd truly does have the ability to
induce trances and, as he and his band play like they tread on live wires, a
hypnotic state takes over the room.

The real Lloyd has finally emerged, a pulsating beast who howls and tears at
his fret board. I'm a junkie, he yells in The Radiant Monkey's title
track, shoving those arms out for all to see. For a brief second, as his
guitar produces undertows of lapping sweat and suffocating noise, what I saw
in Lloyd's eyes made sense.
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