Ian Matthews

Iain Matthews (known in the 1960s first as Ian MacDonald, and from the late 1960s until 1989 as Ian Matthews) is a British musician and songwriter. Influenced by both rock'n'roll and folk music, he has performed mai

Iain Matthews (known in the 1960s first as Ian MacDonald, and from the late 1960s until 1989 as Ian Matthews) is a British musician and songwriter. Influenced by both rock'n'roll and folk music, he has performed mainly as a solo act, although he was a member of Fairport Convention during the early period where they were heavily influenced by American West Coast folk rock. He later had a solo career and fronted the bands Plainsong and Matthews Southern Comfort.

Matthews grew up in a working-class family in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, where he sang with several minor bands during the British pop music explosion of the mid-1960s. He moved to London in 1966, taking a job in a Carnaby Street shoe shop. He recorded a couple of singles there in 1967 with a pop band called Pyramid, before being recruited by Ashley Hutchings as a male vocalist for Fairport Convention, where he duetted first with Judy Dyble, but more famously with Sandy Denny.