Soul under the skin
A young Mod’s forgotten story.
WITH HIS skinhead hairdo, Mod background and sexy rasp, Steve Ellis, quite unexpectedly, became a ‘dangerous’ teenybop pin-up in 1968. The band he fronted, Love Affair, was put together by the drummer’s wealthy dad, an effectively manufactured act which, initially, thought like the real thing. Their singles were cut using session musicians, a not uncommon late-’60s practice, but one that seemed to surprise the press enough to turn it into a semi-scandal, as if punters who had lofted the rousing, orchestral Everlasting Love to Number 1 – and three other singles into the Top 10 within a year – feeling the allure of the teenage Ellis’s soulful voice, had somehow been conned. The screaming girls didn’t care, but the resulting backlash – and the screaming girls – harmed the band’s chances of being taken seriously as ‘rock’ dawned. Love Affair were considered no more authentic than, say, labelmates The Tremeloes, and their enjoyable debut album, The Everlasting Love
Affair, which included a blistering take of Joe South’s Hush – superior to Deep Purple’s cover – was a surprisingly low seller.
Love Affair was not everlasting. Ellis sloped off before album two and entered into a curious, journeyman’s career not unlike that of contemporary Terry Reid, where, through a mixture of poor guidance and confused capriciousness, plus some rotten luck, he failed to consolidate on the breaks he had and keep a grip on what he wanted, drifting through own band Ellis, B-list supergroup Widowmaker, solo albums, live albums and, finally, after an extended period away from music, an album guided by long-term fan Paul Weller.
With so many re-boots, missteps and record labels, only a superfan would have kept up with it all. But now his entire output has been gathered for Finchley Boy ★★★★ (Demon), a soul-boy’s musical life-story across 10 CDs.
There’s an impressive roll call of fellow travellers. Keith Mansfield arranged and produced Everlasting Love, follow-up Rainbow Valley, the stirring orchestral solo single Evie, written by Jimmy Webb, and got Ellis to front the busy soundtrack to the movie of Joe Orton’s Loot. George ‘Zoot’ Money joined him in Ellis, their debut album, 1972’s Riding On The Crest Of A Slump,
produced by Roger Daltrey, being full of good stuff. A few years later, Luther Grosvenor lured Ellis into Widowmaker, a rock’n’soul outfit making a late attempt at duplicating the success of Humble Pie, who signed to Don Arden’s Jet label and toured themselves into the ground.
In 1978, after another decent solo album, The Last Angry Man, with producers Dave Courtney and ex-Shadow Tony Meehan, went nowhere, Ellis, knocked sideways by the death of close friend Keith Moon and, noting how punk was altering the landscape, decided to bow out and get a job on the docks in Brighton. In the early ’80s, he was just making his way back into music, when an accident with a forklift truck sliced both his feet in two. As you might imagine, that took some coming back from. He re-emerged properly in the 21st century, appearing at tribute concerts for his hero Steve Marriott and meeting Paul Weller, who in 2018 produced Boom! Bang!
Twang! including covers of songs by William Bell and Tim Hardin.
Assessing it all, the music from the early years stands out for its energy and Steve’s raw promise, but the most recent track here, Just To Simplify, written, produced and accompanied by Weller, is just as affecting, albeit served at a lower temperature. There’s a life of highs and lows gathered here to be discovered and, whatever it took him to do, Steve Ellis has every right to be proud of it.
“In 1968, Ellis became a ‘dangerous’ teenybop pin-up.”