I t’s late one afternoon in November 1967. Temperatures are near freezing and Steve Ellis, the 17-year-old lead singer of The Love Affair, is at the top of the Eros statue in London’s Piccadilly Circus. Two of his
bandmates are in the fountain beneath, shivering in the water they’ve just fallen into and now there’s a crowd of people gathering, big enough to cause a scene. Ellis is stuck and starting to panic. He’s hanging on to Eros’s arrow for dear life. Traffic is coming to a halt, drivers and passengers trying to get a glimpse of what is going on. Someone sensible calls the police and the fire brigade. Ellis is eventually escorted down.
“It was a PR stunt that went wrong,” he tells RC from his Brighton home. “Our managers made the tenuous connection between the name Love Affair and the Eros statue, one thing led to another, and we were front page news. We were nicked for breach of the peace and causing public disorder and each fined £12 at Bow Street Magistrates. Of course, we had to turn up to court in a hired white Rolls Royce.”
Three months later Everlasting Love, their grandiose cover of the Robert Knight song, hit No 1. In that sense their antics worked. But the song would most likely have hit the top spot anyway for Ellis had, and still does as his recent shows with The Signatures bear witness, a magnificent soul voice, that projected with an irresistible force rivalled only by his then contemporary Steve Marriott.
“Steve Marriott and the Small Faces were kindred spirits,” he admits. “Them and The Who and soul music and mods – that’s where it was at in the 60s.”
Stephen John Ellis was born on 7 April 1950 in Edgware, North London, and grew up in nearby Finchley with his mum, a housewife and part time secretary, his dad, a shipping clerk for Lloyds, his three siblings, and his grandma and granddad, the latter of whom “was on the Somme”, he says proudly.
Denne historien er fra September 2024-utgaven av Record Collector.
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Denne historien er fra September 2024-utgaven av Record Collector.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Paperback Blighters - The books every record collector should read.
The books every record collector should read. Vinyl, you may have heard, has made a big comeback. In 2022, sales of vinyl albums surpassed compact discs (CDs) for the first time in more than three decades in terms of global revenue, racking up more than $1.2bn.
"Beware the Savage Lure/of 1984..." - David Bowie is one of the most venerated musicians ever. But even he had his bad periods.
David Bowie is one of the most venerated musicians ever. But even he had his bad periods. For many, 1984 remains the nadir of his Phil Collins” phase; an artistic/sartonial/tonsorial disaster area. But was it really that awful? Forty years on, Matt Phillips explores Bowie's so-called annus horribilis.
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THE TORTURED SHOPPER'S DEPARTMENT
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Young American
A serendipitous collaboration with David Bowie in 1974 kick-started Luther Vandross' recording career. But he still faced an uphill struggle to succeed as a solo artist. Charles Waring talks to some of the singer's most trusted collaborators about his early years and how he battled to be heard....
MOD ALMIGHTY
Steve Ellis began his career as a mod in flower-power clobber as frontman of chart-toppers Love Affair. Quitting in 1970, he worked with The Who's Roger Daltrey then gave up music to become a docker before a near-death experience. Interest in his work was rekindled after hooking up with long-time fan Paul Weller. Lois Wilson hears how his romance with music endures.
ANARCHISTS IN THE UK
EXACTLY 45 YEARS AGO, CRASS, THE ANARCHIST ACTIVIST COLLECTIVE, WERE FINISHING PIVOTAL SECOND ALBUM, STATIONS OF THE CRASS.
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David Cassidy was arguably the biggest solo star of the immediate post-Beatles era, yet his fame as well as his boyish good looks and extracurricular excessesovershadow the excellence of his breathily intimate, musically accomplished records. Simon Goddard, RC contributor and author of an acclaimed series of books on David Bowie, hails the work of the tortured pop idol
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