• Track Listing

Five CD box set retrospective from singer/songwriter Iain Matthews. Features 2024 remasters of the three albums made for Vertigo Records at the start of his solo career in the early 1970s, and a live version of his first Vertigo album. Including 37 previously unreleased tracks, including a newly-compiled CD of live performances, 'Vertigo Years 1971-2022'. An original member of the folk rock band Fairport Convention from 1967 to 1969 before leaving to form his own band Matthews Southern Comfort and topping the UK charts in 1970 with Joni Mitchell's 'Woodstock', Iain Matthews can rightly be described as a music legend. In the 1970s, as well as recording solo albums for Vertigo, Elektra and CBS/ Columbia, he was also a founder member of Plainsong whose 6CD box set 'Following Amelia' can also be found on Cherry Red Records. Still making albums and playing live to this day, his career in the music business is a classic example of talent married to longevity. This new box set, 'Thro' My Eyes: The Vertigo Years 1970-1974', features the three original albums from his album deal with Vertigo - 'If You Saw Thro' My Eyes', 'Tigers Will Survive', and 'Journeys From Gospel Oak' - alongside a wealth of previously unissued material from Iain's archives, including for the first time on CD material recorded during his 1971 residency at the Bitter End in New York with future Plainsong members Andy Roberts and Bobby Ronga and former Fairport bandmate Richard Thompson. Also included in this comprehensive collection are Vertigo era tracks recorded live in Paris, a live version of his first solo album recorded during an 18-date tour of The Netherlands in 2003, and tracks from the now long out-of-print 'Notebook Series'.