Who was the greatest singer of all time, more specifically the greatest British singer? Well, there’s no definitive answer to that because ultimately it’s down to who you like most. The better question is this: Who was/is your favourite British singer of all time? If you’re like me, the answer changes like the wind, but last Friday, 30th October 2026, we lost one of my favourites and, yes, arguably, one of the greatest of them all. Steve Ellis.
Steve Ellis was for five years from 1966 the lead singer of the popular beat combo outfit Love Affair. They had a run of five hit singles between 1967 and 1969, two of which were proper out there bangers, Rainbow Valley and Bringing On Back The Good Times, and one of which was an all-time classic: Everlasting Love.
It is one of those songs that when I hear it, I am somehow taken back to an otherwise dim and distant past, in my case the house I lived in with my mum. We had an ancient, industrial-sized but far from powerful radio, which took up a significant part of the corner of our living room, to the left of window. BBC Radio 1 had only been in operation for a few months before Everlasting Love was released but the ten-year-old me adored this new station where the music was a million miles away from the turgid middle of the road BBC Light Programme which preceded it. (Think Boom! and Greatest Hits Radio.)
I am not going to pretend that I was aware that Ellis was the only member of the band to perform on the record, the others having been replaced by experienced ‘session’ musicians, or that it was a cover version of a song written by American songwriters Buzz Cason and Mac Gayden. In fact, I didn’t know who wrote the song until I was writing this blog but it didn’t matter then and it doesn’t matter now. It was a brilliant song and Steve Ellis was a brilliant singer. And just get this: he was all of 17 years of age when he recorded it.
I didn’t know much about music in those days – I probably still don’t – but I had my favourites and many of those was because of their singing. John Lennon and Paul McCartney from The Beatles, of course, plus Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith and Davy Jones from The Monkees. Then there were Steve Marriott of The Small Faces and Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones. I learned quickly, and subconsciously, to memorise their voices, a trick I maintain to this day. If only I had a similar talent for school work, life might have turned out very differently.
By the late sixties, Love Affair had run their course and I rather forgot about the band and their lead singer, apart from when from time-to-time I would hear Everlasting Love. Other acts have covered it, but none have got even vaguely close to the Love Affair version. I never tire of hearing it and having learned of Ellis’s passing, I’ve been listening to their more popular songs all over again.
In 2018, Steve Ellis returned to the spotlight with an album called Boom! Bang! Twang!, co-produced and featuring Paul Weller and members of his band. The record was a combination of covers and new music and having bought it, I was surprised to find it was very good indeed. The songs are by and large excellent, Ellis was in fine vocal form. It’s a fine epitaph for a great singer. And yet another major figure from my childhood who is no longer there.
Thank you for the music, as they say. I’ll certainly have everlasting love for the music and voice of Steve Ellis.
