Steve Ellis, the frontman of Love Affair, has died aged 76 after complications from a chronic illness. A social media message said he died peacefully on 30 October, closing the career of the singer whose version of Everlasting Love carried the band to the top of the UK chart in 1968.
That record spent two weeks at No 1 in the UK, and Love Affair added three more UK Top 10 hits in the next two years. The numbers explain why Ellis remained more than a nostalgia name: he fronted the group’s defining hit, then kept returning to recording across the decades.
Love Affair in the UK
Ellis formed Soul Survivors when he was 15 years old, and the group later became Love Affair in the mid-1960s. Signed to Decca, they first stumbled with She Smiled Sweetly, but Everlasting Love changed the trajectory completely after Ellis recorded it between shifts on a building site.
Rainbow Valley spent 11 weeks in the Top 40, and the band’s later run included A Day Without Love and Bringing on Back the Good Times. The pattern is familiar in pop history: one huge hit can distort the memory of a catalog, but in Love Affair’s case the follow-up chart run shows there was more than a one-song story.
Ellis and Paul Weller
Paul Weller paid tribute on Instagram after Ellis’s death, writing: “God bless ya Stevie safe travels everlasting love fo”. Ellis had re-emerged with Best of Days in 2008, and Weller appeared on two tracks on that album before the pair reunited for Boom! Bang! Twang! in 2018.
They kept working together after that. Weller co-wrote two tracks and co-produced Boom! Bang! Twang!, then Ellis and Weller released Just to Simplify in 2022. Baby Faced Assassin followed in September and included three songs co-created with Weller, which keeps Ellis’s late-period output tied to one of the scene’s most durable partnerships.
Ellis’s later catalog
Ellis formed Ellis in 1972, released The Last Angry Man in 1977 and Basement Days in 1983, and returned again with Best of Days in 2008. He also worked with Roger Daltrey, who produced Ellis’s debut album in 1972 and appeared on Best of Days.
Love Affair’s fame waned later in the decade even though Everlasting Love endured as their most popular song on streaming services. That split between chart decline and lasting play is the story of Ellis’s career: the peak came early, but the song never really left the room.
The unanswered point is the medical detail behind the chronic illness. The rest is already clear enough: a singer who reached No 1 in the UK, kept recording for decades, and left behind a hit that still defines his name.
