Steve Ellis, singer of Everlasting Love, dies aged 76

Steve Ellis, the British singer whose voice carried the 1960s hit Everlasting Love, has died at the age of 76, NOS reports. He died last Friday after a long period of lung problems, according to people close to him who announced the news.

What happened

Ellis was the singer of the British band Love Affair. According to NOS, he was only 17 when he recorded the famous version of Everlasting Love in 1967. The song had been a success in the United States shortly before, sung by Robert Knight.

The recording has an unusual history. NOS writes that the record company did not like the first take made with the members of Love Affair. On the second version, Ellis is the only band member you hear, backed by hired session musicians. Earlier this year Ellis summed up the session in three words: “Two takes and done.”

A stunt helped push the single up the charts, though whether it was planned is still unclear. In November 1967 the teenage band members were shivering through a photo shoot at Piccadilly Circus in London. Ellis climbed into a fountain for fun, could not get back down, and had to be rescued by the fire brigade. He was fined 12 British pounds, and the band ended up on the front pages of the British papers.

Later the press found out that the full band was not playing on the hit single. NOS reports that the members mostly shrugged it off. The papers were full of the story, and the fuss did nothing to hurt the group’s popularity in the UK or abroad. Rainbow Valley and A Day Without Love soon followed, and in a short time Love Affair became a big name. In 1968, according to NOS, only The Beatles outsold them in the United Kingdom. Everlasting Love even knocked The Beatles’ Hello, Goodbye off the top of the British chart.

Ellis never reached that kind of audience again. He left the band at the end of 1969, tired of being tied to one big hit, and stepped away from the music industry for a while. During those years he worked in a port and in a supermarket, among other jobs. Music kept calling him back, though. NOS reports that he toured the UK with several bands for decades, until his health stopped him. He gave up performing last year because of his lungs, and he did so reluctantly. “It is a bit like being a carpenter and losing your arm,” he told the music website The Strange Brew earlier this year, in a quote translated by NOS.

In the same interview he said he had come to terms with the song that defined him. “I can’t fault anything on that record. It was a great song, a great arrangement, a great producer. Everything. I was lucky that I got to sing it.”

Why it matters if you live in Netherlands

The song had a clear Dutch connection from the start. NOS reports that Love Affair’s single reached number 12 in the Dutch Top 40, so many people who grew up here, or whose parents did, will know it from Dutch radio.

The song also lasted long after the original. Over the decades many artists have covered it. NOS names Carl Carlton, the duo Rex Smith and Rachel Sweet, and Gloria Estefan as the most successful. In Europe, the German singer Sandra had a hit with it in the late 1980s, and Jamie Cullum and U2 also recorded popular versions. That means you may know the song from one of these later versions without ever having heard Ellis sing it.

Because of all those versions, the song holds a rare record. According to NOS, Everlasting Love is the only song to have entered the UK charts in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

You can easily hear the original for yourself. NOS notes that Love Affair’s recording still gets hundreds of thousands of streams every month, and the official video is available online. For newcomers, it is a quick way into a piece of pop history that crossed the North Sea and stayed popular in the Netherlands too.

What to watch next

NOS does not report any details of a funeral, memorial or planned tribute. Expect more reactions from British music circles and from the artists who built on his recording. Interest in the original single often rises after news like this, and with its existing monthly streams, the song may climb streaming playlists again in the coming days.

If you want to hear Ellis in his own words, NOS points readers to his interview with The Strange Brew earlier this year. It covers the two-take session, his reluctant retirement from the stage, and how he finally made peace with the song he recorded at 17.

Source: NOS Cultuur