Steve Ellis

Steve Ellis, born during April 1950 in Edgware, Middlesex, first rose to prominence as lead singer for the 1960s pop-and-soul five-piece Love Affair, whose single “Everlasting Love” claimed the top position on the U.K. singles chart in 1968. At fifteen he had already stepped in front of the Soul Survivors, a North London outfit that quickly earned local notice through appearances at storied venues including The Marquee and The Flamingo. After cutting one record the group secured a CBS contract, adopted the Love Affair name, and issued a succession of singles that included the chart-topping “Everlasting Love.” Twelve months after that breakthrough Ellis left the lineup to pursue fresh musical avenues while retaining his mod sensibilities. Subsequent projects such as Widowmaker and the band Ellis failed to match the earlier commercial heights. By the close of the 1970s he had stepped away from the industry altogether, taking employment as a docker until a 1981 car crash rendered him unable to walk and consigned most of the ensuing decade to repeated hospital stays and rehabilitation.

Early in the 1990s Ellis assembled a new iteration of Love Affair and performed at numerous U.K. 1960s-themed weekenders and club nights, later documenting one such show on the 1994 live set Plugged In: Live at the Cavendish. He maintained a steady presence on the nostalgia circuit throughout the remainder of the decade and released the charity single “Step Inside My Love” for the NSPCC, which featured a guest appearance by Paul Weller. During the 2000s, reissues of Love Affair material, Widowmaker recordings, and various live collections appeared under Ellis’s name. His association with Weller persisted, encompassing a joint performance at the 2001 Steve Marriott Memorial Concert and a contribution to the 2004 album Sort of Innocence. Ellis resurfaced in 2011 with the Angel Air release Ten Commitments and resumed touring; several years later he returned to the studio for a new project. The resulting 2018 album Boom Bang Twang! reunited him with Weller on a mixture of covers and original songs and marked his return to Sony, the label that had first issued Love Affair’s “Everlasting Love.”