That time Jimi Hendrix punched television’s Richard Lloyd.

Even though their 1977 debut album Marquee Moon has been endlessly touted as one of the greatest rock albums of all time, most people don’t know about the New York punk band Television. But hopefully we can change that a little bit.

The foursome came of age in the seventies CBGB era alongside Patti Smith, the Ramones, Dead Boys, Blondie, Iggy Pop, and all those other rock junkies who happened to pull it together long enough to make iconic albums.

Inspired by writers like Jim Carroll and William Burroughs, and the garbage dump that was NYC in the late seventies, the CBGB scene was a potent cocktail of artists, musicians, punks, and emaciated misfits who shared a common love of not giving a shit. Television climbed the social hierarchy to star status when Smith took a liking to the band during a residency the two acts shared at the downtown club (Smith would eventually shack up with the band’s frontman, Tom Verlaine).

Verlaine took himself and the music very seriously, while bassist Richard Hell and lead guitarist Richard Lloyd were more interested in having a good time. Hell quit the band before Marquee Moon debuted, but Lloyd stuck around, and his style went on to influence bands like R.E.M., Echo and the Bunnymen, and Joy Division.

Long before Lloyd played onstage with Television, he was a baby-faced teenager roaming the streets of New York. And like most boys in the sixties who wanted to play guitar, Lloyd idolized Jimi Hendrix.

According to Lloyd, sometime in early 1968, he and his friends managed to pool together enough money to buy some hash. While they were waiting for the delivery at his friend’s house, a 16-year-old Brooklynite named Velvert Turner showed up. Turner started talking about how he knew Jimi Hendrix, and while the other boys mocked him, Lloyd says he knew “to an absolute degree of certainty that [Turner] knew Jimi Hendrix.”

As Lloyd tells it, Turner called the Warwick Hotel in Manhattan and asked for a name nobody recognized. He passed the receiver around so the others could hear it ringing, and when it got to Lloyd someone picked up. “‘Hey man, what’s up? Who is this?’” Lloyd said he heard, adding, “He must have been really asleep, ’cause it rang about 14 times.”

Lloyd pretended to be Turner then quickly shoved the receiver into the kid’s hands. When Turner got off the phone, he announced he was on the guest list for Hendrix’s show that night, with a plus one. Turner invited Lloyd, the quiet kid, and the only one who hadn’t mocked him.

Hendrix opened up to Lloyd, confessing how he felt stifled by fame, and was sick of performing on command. He wanted to explore new musical styles but “they” wouldn’t let him.

For Lloyd, the show was life-changing.

“It was like looking into a nuclear furnace — otherworldly and everybody was freaking out,” he said in an interview with the punk history website Please Kill Me. “It was the first time I ever saw a wave because the stage rotated. When Jimi was in front of your side, you stood up and everybody screamed and yelled and then when you couldn’t see [the band] anymore you sat back down and there was a new group standing.”

Turns out Turner knew Hendrix pretty well. Hendrix had been teaching him guitar, and Turner soon started sharing everything he’d learned with Lloyd. The two boys became best friends, toting around their Stratocasters to school and sneaking into any show they could.

In November the following year, Hendrix was playing a small club called Salvation in Greenwich Village — an intimate warm-up show to kick off a long tour, and an early birthday party for Hendrix, who was turning 26. To keep fans away, the band was billed as the Black Roman Orgy, but the sound system sucked and Hendrix left the stage, retreating to his table, where Lloyd had somehow scored a seat.

Over the course of the evening, Hendrix opened up to Lloyd, confessing how he felt stifled by fame, and was sick of performing on command. He wanted to explore new musical styles but “they” wouldn’t let him. Awestruck, Lloyd gushed about how much Hendrix’s music meant to him, and encouraged him to do what he wanted despite what anyone thought. Then out of nowhere, Hendrix reached out and punched him three times — twice in the face, once in the gut.

Shocked and humiliated, Lloyd slunk out of the booth and hid in the back of the club, until the cleaning guy asked him to leave. Outside in the parking lot, Lloyd ran into Hendrix, who was waiting in his Corvette.

“He called me over and asked for my hands,” Lloyd remembers. “He apologized and began weeping on them.” Lloyd stood motionless as his hands were soaked with Hendrix’s tears. The rock star mumbled near-inaudible apologies, before finally rolling up his window and driving off.

When Lloyd told Turner what happened, he laughed. Hendrix hated compliments, he explained. He thought they were patronizing — basically an insult.

But those three punches didn’t matter to Lloyd. “I didn’t care that he hit me,” he says, looking back. “He gave me something that I’ve carried to this day. It was a gift.”