On October 27, the Sixties Gold tour returns to Cardiff’s St David’s Hall featuring among its line-up Steve Ellis of 1960s chart-topping band, The Love Affair.
Steve was barely 17 when he reached the top of the charts with the single Everlasting Love in 1967, featuring a soulful vocal delivery that betrayed his then youth.
“Some of it was because we were playing all the time,” Steve tells Andy Howells, “I started singing when I was 15 and by the time I ended up in a studio I was 17. I still hadn’t found my complete voice, The grass roots were soul music and it sort of went from there. The more I played, the more I loaded it up.”
Although its 50 years since Steve scaled the charts with hits such as A Day Without Love, Bringing On Back The Good Times and Rainbow Valley, he’s still showing no signs of slowing down the recording process.
“I just keep making music,” says Steve, “We have this sixties thing as one avenue and then I keep making new music otherwise I’d turn into a Juke Box! I don’t do Juke Box and never have done! You’ve got to keep it fresh and I’ve made a lot of records with people at different times.”
Following Steve’s departure from The Love Affair in 1969, he went on to work with numerous artists and musicians including Peter Green, formerly of Fleetwood Mac, Zoot Money and in 2013 collaborated on a single with acoustic duo, Cow,
Recently Steve has been back in the studio, taking up an invitation from old friend Paul Weller to lay down tracks in Weller’s Surrey-based Black Barn Studios for Boom Bang Twang, a new album scheduled for February 2018.
“I’ve worked with Paul before because he’s a mate of about 30 years. He said “Come and do your album at my studio” We set an amount of time to do numbers. Three days and you cut and run and then two months go by and they go, “Yeah we’ve got a three-day block in here, you can have that!” and it works! We’ve got Cow on it The Moons, The Paul Weller Band, I hate using the word organic, but It all works in a magical way!
Prior to the release of Big Bang Twang, Steve is back out on the road with the Sixties Gold tour joining a line-up made up of Gerry and The Pacemakers, The Searchers, Vanity Fare and Brian Poole and The Tremeloes.
Steve will be collaborating with Vanity Fare to perform his classic hits including Everlasting Love,
“I knew about Vanity Fare and they’re a good little band,” he continues, “they’ve got good harmonies, good players and a good drummer. We tried it out a few times and it works so I’m working with them on the Sixties Gold dates. Then hopefully doing some work with the Norman Beaker band next year.”
- Catch Sixties Gold at Cardiff’s St David’s Hall on October 27 for ticket details contact 02920878444 or visit stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk