Rock Goes To College: Paul Sexton

As rock exploded around the world and the album era began, so young bands and solo acts would sling their gear into their trusty Ford Transits and bomb up and down the new motorway system to university and polytechnic campuses all over the UK, honing their sound and hoping to get signed.

A list of acts who proved themselves on this circuit reads like a who’s who of rock music: Pink Floyd, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Fleetwood Mac, Black Sabbath, Queen, The Kinks, Dire Straits, AC/DC, Genesis and Nick Drake all did their time in sweaty and badly ventilated dressing rooms in places like Hull University and Sheffield Poly, and even Paul McCartney, after the Beatles fell apart, took his new band Wings out on the circuit to get them road tested.

Now, for the first time, veteran music journalist Paul Sexton sets out to this extraordinary moment in British music history. Tapping into his huge network of contacts in the music industry, not just with the bands but with the social secretaries who booked the gigs (lots of whom would go on to run record labels and manage huge acts themselves), Rock Goes to College is a fascinating, raucous ride of a book, crammed full of incredible, never-before-heard stories of the beginnings of some of the most famous acts on the planet.

Set in The LCR itself, this event places Norwich at the heart of that story. The LCR stands as one of the very venues that welcomed these touring artists, a space where reputations were forged in front of student audiences, long before arenas and commercial circuits took hold.

In conversation with long-time LCR staff member Gavin Hudson, whose first-hand experience brings an invaluable on-the-ground perspective, Sexton’s account will be enriched by the realities of running and sustaining a venue at the heart of this scene. The conversation will be chaired by Professor George McKay, a leading academic in popular music and culture, whose work offers a wider cultural and historical lens on the period. Together, they will explore not just the mythology of these gigs, but the logistics, personalities and occasional chaos behind them.

The event will be followed by book sales and a signing with the author.

Tickets: £15

Paul Sexton

Paul Sexton is an author, journalist and broadcaster. He started writing about music for the weekly pop paper Record Mirror while still a teenager in 1977, and his work has appeared across the UK press, as well as in Billboard magazine and countless documentaries and shows for BBC Radio 2. He is the author of the critically acclaimed biography of the Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, Charlie’s Good Tonight, which was published in 2022.

Gavin Hudson

Gavin Hudson is Duty Venue Manager at the LCR and compiler of The Gig List, an attempt to list all the events organised by UEA Student Union over the last 50 years. He often finds himself teaching learnt lessons, telling stories, setting the live music scene in context, and revealing backstage tales.

Hosted by Professor George McKay

George McKay is Professor of Media Studies at UEA, where he mainly researches popular music. His most recent book was The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock (2025), and he’s currently working on a book called Here Comes the Sun, about music and climate emergency. He’s been going to gigs at the LCR since he was a teenager punk rocker in the 1970s.