Obituary / Published 2026-11-03

Steve Ellis, the Voice of Everlasting Love, Dies at 76

Steve Ellis, the singer of Love Affair, died on Oct. 30 at 76; Rolling Stone and Deadline both report the death was announced on his Facebook page. Everlasting Love, written by Buzz Carson and Marc Gayden, reached Number One in the UK in February 1968, displacing the Beatles’ Hello, Goodbye.

(See the reader poll and source context below).

Steve Ellis, the singer whose group Love Affair took Everlasting Love to Number One in Britain in 1968, died on Oct. 30 at 76. Both reports say his Facebook page announced the death.

Flat vector illustration of a vintage oval microphone on a stand against a pale pink-and-cream wall, with the words “A voice from 1967” in the lower-left corner.
Conceptual editorial illustration; not a photograph of the people or event described.

What do the sources establish?

Recorded source context. No verified social reaction quotes or aggregate vote results are supplied.
Platform / SourceCore Stance / QuoteEngagement MetricTimestamp
Steve Ellis, Love Affair Singer Behind ‘Everlasting Love,’ Dead at 76 — Rolling StoneReported context: [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object]Not recorded
Steve Ellis Dead: “Everlasting Love” Singer Was 76 — DeadlineReported context: [object Object] [object Object] [object Object]Not recorded

THE SHORT VERSION

  • Steve Ellis, the singer of Love Affair, died on Oct. 30 at 76; Rolling Stone and Deadline both report the death was announced on his Facebook page.
  • Everlasting Love, written by Buzz Carson and Marc Gayden, reached Number One in the UK in February 1968, displacing the Beatles’ Hello, Goodbye.
  • The reports differ on when he left the band, 1969 or 1970, and both trace a later life of dock work, a forklift accident and a return to the stage.

The death was announced on Facebook

Steve Ellis, the English singer whose group Love Affair took Everlasting Love to the top of the UK singles chart in 1968, died on Friday, Oct. 30. He was 76. Rolling Stone reported the death, confirmed on his Facebook page, and Deadline reported the same date and the same place for the announcement. Both outlets published on Nov. 3, four days after the death. Deadline notes that the band had several British hits but was never a major cultural presence in the United States.

Neither outlet was given an exact medical cause. Rolling Stone said the Facebook post mentioned "complications from a chronic illness" and added that Ellis "peacefully left the world on the evening of October 30, 2026, in the presence of his loved ones." Deadline reported that he lived in Brighton, England, and that the family statement said he passed peacefully in the presence of loved ones. Deadline also reported that he is survived by his wife Val. Neither outlet names a hospital or a doctor. Rolling Stone does not name who wrote the post.

A song that was already a hit in America

Rolling Stone reported that Everlasting Love was written by Buzz Carson and Marc Gayden and had already been a hit for the American singer Robert Knight, reaching Number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. Love Affair formed in 1966, when Ellis was still a teenager, and recorded its version late in 1967, the magazine said. The single came out that December.

Ellis later described arriving at the session to find neither his bandmates nor a small studio group but a 40-piece orchestra and a room of top session players, Rolling Stone reported. "Two takes, done. That was it," he said of the recording. The magazine describes Knight's original as a rich, uptempo soul record and says Love Affair made the song bigger still. Deadline prints the chorus as "Open up your eyes, then you realize/Here I stand with my everlasting love."

Eros, a fire brigade and Number One

To draw attention to the December 1967 release, the group's press officer staged a stunt that had the band climb the statue of Eros in the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus, according to Rolling Stone. Ellis got stuck on top and had to be rescued by firemen, and the band was arrested and fined.

By February 1968 the single was Number One on the UK chart, displacing the Beatles' Hello, Goodbye, Rolling Stone reported. Deadline reported that the record did not chart in the United States, where a 1974 cover by Carl Carlton had the most success, and that the song later appeared in the film American Psycho and in trailers for Belfast, a film in which Jamie Dornan performs it.

The session players behind the record

Deadline reported that the record caused a stir in Britain soon after release when it emerged that, apart from Ellis's vocals, the instrumentation had been supplied by session musicians. The band around him was the keyboardist Lynton Guest, the guitarist Rex Brayley, the drummer Maurice Bacon and the bassist Mick Jackson, Deadline reported. Deadline said the story was public at the time rather than a later disclosure.

Rolling Stone's account does not mention that controversy. It records instead that Love Affair followed the single with three more Top 10 UK hits, Rainbow Valley, A Day Without Love and Bringing on Back the Good Times. Deadline lists the same three and adds that One Road reached the Top 20. Both list the same three follow-up singles. Neither report says whether the revelation changed how the record was received.

After Love Affair, the docks and a forklift

The two reports differ on when he left. Rolling Stone says Ellis quit the group in 1970 and formed a band called Ellis with the keyboard player Zoot Money. Deadline says he left for a solo career in 1969 and continued to record and perform for decades, often with reconstituted versions of Love Affair. Neither report says which year is correct.

Rolling Stone reported that Widowmaker, his next group, had modest success with two albums in the late 1970s, and that by the early 1980s he had left music, was living in the South of England and was working on the docks. A freak accident with a forklift destroyed his feet and led to nearly a decade of operations and physical therapy, the magazine reported. He returned to playing, began gigging regularly and recorded several albums, including The Best of Days in 2015 with Roger Daltrey and Paul Weller.

The song he came back to

Ellis had a complicated relationship with his most famous record, Rolling Stone reported: he declined to perform it live for a while, then changed his mind. "You can't turn your back on your heritage; you cannot not do what people want," he said. He also said: "It's become one of those songs of its time, of its era." He was 17 when the single came out.

Deadline reported that Ellis was born Stephen John Ellis in Edgware, Middlesex, on April 7, 1950, and that he had withdrawn from a planned tour last year. "I have never fully recovered from Covid in 2020 and chronic symptoms since have compromised my ability to sustain lengthy touring anymore," he wrote at the time. Neither report gives a funeral arrangement. Related coverage on this site includes Bobby Wright's obituary, Elke Sommer's obituary and Glen Hansard's Shane MacGowan cover.

Sources & reporting limits

  1. Steve Ellis, Love Affair Singer Behind ‘Everlasting Love,’ Dead at 76 — Rolling Stone
  2. Steve Ellis Dead: “Everlasting Love” Singer Was 76 — Deadline
Keep the thread.

Follow Music to find related stories on your next visit.

THE WEEKLY EDIT

The week, made clear.

Stories worth understanding, brought together in one weekly edition.

Share this page

Instagram, TikTok & other apps

Copy the page link, then paste it where your chosen app supports links. You choose whether to send or publish.