Love Affair

THIRTY YEARS ON FROM "EVERLASTING LOVE", SINGER STEVE ELLIS AND DRUMMER MAURICE BACON TELL THE STORY BEHIND ONE OF THE SIXTIES' MOST LOVEABLE HITS

Bringing on back the good times: John Reed, with thanks to Alan Clayson

In 1968, only the Beatles sold more records in Britain than the Love Affair. Yet none of the band was over twenty, their brattish antics aggravated the cognoscenti and they didn't even play on their singles. The ace up their elegantly-embroidered Carnaby Street sleeve was Steve Ellis, an immensely talented singer whose voice belied his tender, 18-year-old frame.

Add the might of CBS producers Mike Smith and Keith Mansfield, and the country's top session musicians, and the band couldn't fail. Between January 1968 and July 1969, the Love Affair notched up five Top 20 hits, beginning with the classic "Everlasting Love", a perennial of oldies radio to this day, and which was resurrected only last month by no less a force than the cast of BBC1's long-running hospital drama, Casualty.

It may have been a cover version but "Everlasting Love" still encapsulates an era of innocent pop, an era which also spawned songs like "Young Girl", "Bend Me, Shape Me", "Silence Is Golden", "Baby Come Back" and "Baby Now That I've Found You". Some rock historians would have us believe that the late 60s were all about the blossoming of flower power, not of crude Top 30 singles. But as the beat explosion's most vital exponents - the Kinks, the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the Small Faces - retreated to the studio to change the face of music, new names were needed to fill the void, in a world of showbiz, teen mags, clothes allowances, Top Of The Pops and screaming girls.

The pop 45 was still the central cog in the wheel of the music industry. For bands like the Love Affair and peers like Amen Corner, the Herd or the Marmalade, the hit single was their only chance of reaching beyond the treadmill of nightly club gigs. For Simon Dupree & the Big Sound, that break came with "Kites". For Status Quo, it was "Pictures Of Matchstick Men". And for the Love Affair, it was "Everlasting Love", which hit No. 1 in 1968, the same week drummer Maurice Bacon celebrated his 16th birthday.

The band were attacked for not playing on their singles, despite the fact it wasn't an unusual scenario for the time - and anyway, who wanted to hear a bunch of 'pretty boy' teenagers with mediocre talent? The band reacted with an openly arrogant stance towards the media and the industry. In this respect, they anticipated the Sex Pistols' confrontational front by a decade - it may be a coincidence but Rotten & Co. covered one of the Love Affair's strongest hits, "A Day Without Love", in early rehearsals.

The Love Affair tended to be dismissed as a passing teenybop sensation but Ellis's voice owed more to fellow Stevies Marriott (Small Faces) and Winwood (Spencer Davis Group) - they all shared a love of U.S. soul. The Love Affair may have emulated the Small Faces, but they failed to match their idols' transition into a more mature, studio-based outfit. When Steve Ellis quit, the Love Affair effectively died with the 60s and their 18-month supremacy was over.

"There was talk of calling us Thin Red Line and painting a line down our heads! We went, no way, we're not 'avin' that!"

Not unlike their North London predecessors the Dave Clark Five, the Love Affair - or the Soul Survivors, as they were originally known - were formed around their drummer, Maurice 'Mo' Bacon (born 26/1/52).

"I come from a family of drummers", says Maurice. "Uncle Max was a famous drummer in the Ambrose Orchestra in the 30s. My father was a semi-pro drummer, and a cousin, Victor Feldman, was a famous session player. He played on Steely Dan's records. So after I started playing drums, my father formed a band for me by placing adverts in the paper."

The band's singer was also no stranger to bashing the skins. Steve Ellis (born 7/4/50) laughs: "I played drums - badly - in a school band in Finchley. Then a mate of mine said, why don't you sing?, because I used to make up songs and he had a guitar. I was around 12 years old."

The Bacons were from Southgate; the rest of the band were recruited from nearby Finchley, where Maurice's father Sidney was the proprietor of a successful handbag factory. "There was an ad in the Melody Maker for a singer for a young band", explains Steve. "As a dare, I went for this audition. And that was the Soul Survivors: Maurice, myself, Morgan Fisher on keyboards - I knew Morgan already - Ian Miller on guitar and Warwick Rose on bass. This is early 1966. The first number I ever learnt to sing with the band was 'Keep On Running'."

Warehouse
Sidney Bacon agreed to nurture his son's ambitions by managing the band. "My father was fairly wealthy", says Maurice. "He invested a lot in the band, bought all the equipment and had a warehouse in Walthamstow in which we'd rehearse. And we had vans to go to gigs in."

At first, the team adopted an irreverent approach to bookings, to say the least, as Steve reveals: "We used to gatecrash weddings and bar mitzvahs and then say, 'We're the band you booked'. 'But we haven't booked a band!' 'Oh, we might as well play!' We'd turn up in the Commer with the PA. They were our first amateur appearances - those and Mod clubs down in Clapton."

The warehouse gave the band an ideal base, as Steve recalls: "There was a constant flow of people there. Kenny Lynch came and watched the football on his portable - very nice fella. And Owen Gray came down sometimes with his big 'herb' cigarettes - and we didn't know what they were! So there was an influence of ska and bluebeat - we even did a cover of Prince Buster's 'Ten Commandments'."

Maurice's father soon roped in two co-managers - Decca Records' marketing director, John Cokell, and the label's in-house photographer David Wedgbury. Cokell eventually left Decca to oversee the band's day-to-day affairs.

The band's management then decided upon a new name - the Love Affair - though not without some prevarication. "I was happy with the Soul Survivors", admits Steve. "There was talk of calling us Thin Red Line, the idea being to have a painted line down the middle of our heads that went down into the suit and trousers! Honestly! This was quite radical, almost like Clockwork Orange, but we went, no way, we're not 'avin' that!"

Instead, their next move was recording, as Maurice explains: "We'd done demos in little studios in Denmark Street but the first time we went in a proper recording studio was with Kenny Lynch. He wrote the Small Faces' hit, 'Sha La La La Lee' - he was this credible songwriter and the Small Faces were our idols. He came up with 'Woman, Woman', which we recorded in Abbey Road in November 1966".

The session was stillborn. Instead, Cokell oversaw a deal with Decca for a cover of the Rolling Stones' "She Smiled Sweetly", perhaps inspired by Chris Farlowe's success with Jagger/Richards "Out Of Time" that summer. Issued within days of the Stones' own version on their "Between The Buttons" album in early '67, the single was produced by legendary blues producer Mike Vernon, then working in-house at Decca.

"I think the idea was to make 'She Smiled Sweetly' like Procol Harum later did, which was ridiculous", moans Ellis. "It was a total non-starter, a bland, poor imitation of the Stones. It was in the wrong key, which I didn't know at the time. I hated it. But we took it up to Radio 1 and met Tony Blackburn, who's an absolute gentleman. He said, I'll play that - and my mum was very happy!"

Despite its period charm (and a Kenny Lynch-supervised Morgan/Ellis original, "Satisfaction Guaranteed", on the flip), the record flopped. Steve sighs: "I knew it wouldn't be a hit. I wasn't into the Stones, anyway, so it was a bad decision. But we were kids. Then our management came in with 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale' by Procol Harum, touting it about, but there was no way we could better that. It was fabulous. So we passed on that one. It wasn't really us - it was too hippie."

The Love Affair. (L-R): Lynton Guest, Maurice Bacon, Rex Brayley, Mick Jackson, Steve Ellis.

By the time "She Smiled Sweetly" was in the shops - and despite their youth - the band had made their presence felt in clubland. "We'd rehearse and rehearse, play and play", remembers Ellis. "We did all the London soul clubs - the Marquee, Tiles, the Flamingo, the Kilt and the Ricky Tic. We were mad on Stax, Motown, Chess, a bit of Beach Boys."

"At that point, we were fairly cool", adds Bacon. "We played at the Speakeasy, the Bag O'Nails. We'd play residencies - every Saturday at the Marquee for a month. We played three/four nights a week around the country to make a living - even though, initially, we were still at school. We had left school and gone professional for nearly a year, gigging, before we started having hits."

The band's set was typical of live bands of the period, hooked on the same U.S. soul 45s beloved of their Mod-heavy audience - songs like Aaron Neville's "Tell It Like It Is", Garnett Mimms' "I'll Take Good Care Of You", "Rescue Me" by Fontella Bass, Lee Dorsey's "Ride Your Pony", Eddie Floyd's "Knock On Wood" and Marvin Gaye's "Ain't That Peculiar". "My favourite singers were Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett, Ray Charles, the Impressions, most definitely Otis Redding", enthuses Steve. "I love David Ruffin's voice - beautiful - and James Brown's."

But according to Steve, their chief role model was undoubtedly the Small Faces: "They were kindred spirits - them and the Who. The Marriott/Lane partnership was superb. Those two bands were four/five years older than us. The Move were something else, too. On a good night at the Marquee, they were phenomenal - they were more West Coast pop, Byrds covers. We'd see Georgie Fame, brilliant, a major talent; Zoot Money, Graham Bond, Geno Washington, Cliff Bennett, Eric Burdon."

As the Decca deal petered away, the Love Affair visited R.G. Jones' now-legendary studios in Morden, South London. "We did a lot with R.G. Jones", adds Bacon. "He was great. I've still got an acetate on Oak from May 1967, 'Do You Dream', written by Steve and Morgan."

Muff
The band then attracted a well-connected mentor. "We were sending out demos and Muff Winwood (ex-Spencer Davis Group), A&R with Island, picked up on us because of Steve's voice, which was incredible", explains Maurice. "He was very much in the Steve Winwood vein so Muff would have appreciated that."

With Muff producing, the Love Affair recorded the Spencer Davis Group's 'Back Into My Life Again' at Island. EMIdisc acetates were cut but despite the song's obvious commercial potential, the track was abandoned.

Meanwhile, the lads stumbled across another potential cover version, as Maurice reveals: "Because John Cokell was at Decca, he heard Robert Knight's 'Everlasting Love', which was on their subsidiary label, Monument." Steve: "The management put it on and we all loved it immediately. Muff wanted us to record it on our own - no orchestra, no nothing. Somewhere, there's a version just by the Love Affair."

Although Robert Knight was a veteran of the Southern Soul scene, the Tennessee-based singer had only finally tasted success in his native America in October '67 after he was spotted performing in Nashville by Mac Gayden, co-owner of the local Rising Sons label. He and his partner Buzz Cason not only offered Knight a solo deal but presented him with their co-composition, "Everlasting Love", a catchy, country-tinged soul song that cleverly bridged the gap between the R&B and pop charts.

Knight had enjoyed considerable Stateside success with "Everlasting Love" and Cokell knew that'd have to be quick to steal a march on its UK release. There was one problem with the Muff Winwood-produced version: as Maurice puts it, "no-one thought it was that good". Back to the drawing board.

By this time, the Love Affair had joined the books of the prestigious Starlight Agency for live bookings, alongside CBS artists like the Tremeloes, Anita Harris, and the Marmalade. That led them in turn to CBS's in-house producer Mike Smith, famous - alongside 'musical director' Keith Mansfield - for a polished, orchestrated, hard-hitting pop sound.

"It was probably John Cokell's idea to do 'Everlasting Love' with an orchestra", suggests Bacon. "None of us could read music and all these singles were made within three-hour sessions." It was decided that Steve should sing but the backing - orchestra and all - would be played by session musicians. "Mike Smith was brilliant, so talented", says Ellis (though Bacon suggests the real star of the show was engineer Mike Ross, who worked with the band throughout their career). "They had a 40-piece orchestra and you'd be in the back door at CBS Studios - bosh and you're on, three takes and that was that. I put the vocal on and the number was a bit special so everything just clicked."

Issued in December 1967, the Love Affair's "Everlasting Love" was a barnstomper of a single, from the thundering bassline to the high-impact brass and rousing orchestration, not to mention Steve Ellis's belting, deep-throated vocal. Three decades on, its sassy production begs comparison with contemporary CBS hits like "Young Girl" and "Lady Willpower" by American act Gary Puckett & the Union Gap. "It was trying to be like Phil Spector", adds Steve, "that massive, orchestrated wall of sound. When I heard it, it completely knocked me back. I'd never heard anything like it".

On 6th January 1968, "Everlasting Love" cautiously entered the charts at No. 36 but risked being lost in the post-Christmas lull - and Robert Knight's own version was hot on its heels (it peaked at No. 40). It was time for action. Syd Bacon apparently slipped a backhander of £200 to pirate station Radio Caroline to secure 40 plays per week. And they needed a publicity stunt.

"Our drummer took his oath wearing a skullcap but because he had a perm, it wobbled about. Our guitarist wet his pants he was laughing so much!"

Steve laughs: "We had this superb publicist, 'Biffo' Bryans (he later died in a car accident). He had these mad ideas. One day, we're all walking up to Piccadilly Circus and he said, I got it, climb up Eros. We said, you're havin' a laugh! No, we'll take some photos. I got to the top with the bow and arrow, two got to the middle, the other two are frothing about underneath in the water and we couldn't get down. Biffo's going, get down, the police are coming.

"The next thing, the whole of Piccadilly Circus has ground to a halt. It's two o'clock in the afternoon. The fire brigade came with ladders, the police came and we got arrested. The papers had 'Hippies invade Eros' on the front page, because our drummer had a twinky perm like Jimi Hendrix and a kaftan - he never did have any dress sense!

"So we got taken down to West End Central police station and bailed to go to court for a breach of the peace - and when we went back, the record was No. 1. You couldn't buy publicity like that! We went in the box and got fined £8 each. Our bass player looks at this sergeant and says, that buys a year's supply of truncheons and police whistles! The bloke went ballistic! Our drummer was Jewish and when he took his oath, he had to put a skullcap on but because he had a perm, the cap was wobbling about. We're sitting behind this dock falling about. The judge is going, Order, order, order! Our guitarist actually wet his pants he was laughing so much."

The following week, "Everlasting Love" climbed to No. 15, then No. 3 and No. 2 before topping the charts on 3rd February. The Love Affair had arrived and yet the band were barely out of short trousers. "From starting the band to recording 'Everlasting Love' was less than two years", adds Bacon. "I was 16 the week it went to No. 1. We did Top Of The Pops five weeks in a row - three as it was going up the charts and then it was No. 1 for two."

The band's lifestyle was transformed from the usual diary of club gigs and rehearsals into a whistle-stop routine of TV appearances, media interviews, radio sessions and photo opportunities. Steve laughs: "It was mental, complete madness. Imagine you've got five fellas - I was 17 - who've never seen anything of life. I came straight out of school into an apprenticeship and had to do the band at nights. I was getting about three hours' sleep. Then, all of a sudden, this went off."

The practice of using session musicians on a pop record was commonplace but rarely acknowledged - that is, until the Love Affair appeared live on prime time TV. "We were on Jonathan King's show, Good Evening. He likes notoriety so he says to our bass player on live TV on a Saturday night, 'You didn't play on your record'. We looked at each other: 'No, we didn't'. He said 'But you did sing on it, didn't you?' 'Yeah.' The next thing, it's all over the papers: 'Band admit...'.

"So we got blacklisted from Top Of The Pops. One of the executives used to say, if you want to be on the programme, you have to buy my wife a washing machine as a token gesture of goodwill. We said, bollocks, no! We're in the charts, anyway. We refused so we got banned. There was loads of fuss but we were cocky and 17/18 so we didn't care - as long as we were playing to a good crowd."

The Love Affair pose in "weird, horrible clothes" outside Syd Bacon's factory where they used to rehearse

Such was the rapidity of the Love Affair's rise that they hadn't even signed a contract. Maurice laughs: "When it went to No. 1 we said, let's get another deal somewhere else! CBS then threatened to slap an injunction on us so we decided that, rather than spend two years in court, we'd just move forward with them."

Moving forward meant sticking with the hit formula, to the extent of covering another Robert Knight song, "Rainbow Valley". Cynical or not, the gambit paid off and the Love Affair were rewarded with a second Top 5 hit in April. Again, the orchestrated Mansfield/Smith arrangements and Ellis's powerful larynx shone through, but the record led to accusations of plagiarism. Steve is defiant: "I remember going up to Robert Knight on a TV show. I apologised to him - sorry we re-recorded your numbers - but he said, it doesn't matter to me. He was really nice."

Meanwhile, a keen business eye led to a sponsorship deal with a famous cosmetics company, as Maurice explains: "We were one of the first bands to do a sponsored tour - with Yardley make-up. We did all the big Top Rank clubs and Yardley put their 'Pretty Goods' range in the foyers. I've got a ten-minute video that Yardley did of us. On the back of the cover of 'Rainbow Valley', girls could send off for a Yardley pack. We got paid a fortune, about £400 a show. I think the only act earning more money was Geno Washington & the Ram Jam Band."

Lacking any real confidence as tunesmiths, the band advertised for budding songwriters, which led them to Philip Goodhand-Tait (ex-Stormsville Shakers). His first contribution had been the B-side of "Everlasting Love", "Gone Are The Songs Of Yesterday", though its recording emphasised the hurried, production-line attitudes of the times. "It was done at the end of a session", reveals Bacon, "and we only had time left for one take. Steve missed the first verse and they didn't even bother going back to do it again!"

"Phil started shooting songs at us", continues Steve. "After a few tapes, we thought, this is good - so he wrote our next four singles, 'A Day Without Love', 'One Road', 'Bringing On Back The Good Times' and 'Baby I Know', plus album tracks. He was a good singer and keyboard player, kinda like a sixth member - though he didn't tour. It wasn't just like a conveyer belt."

Each single was heavily orchestrated, each sported Steve's soulful voice and all but the last of Goodhand-Tait's compositions kept the Love Affair in the Top 20 through till the summer of '69. It was a winning formula, albeit frustrating for the other band members.

"We didn't play on any of the singles", explains Maurice. "We'd only have three hours so the easiest, most efficient way was for Keith Mansfield to score the whole thing, bring in session guys like Clem Cattini on drums and Herbie Flowers on bass and do it in two takes. Mansfield was only involved with the singles, when we used orchestras. Otherwise, it was John Goodison. We were allowed to play on the B-sides and the album and write some of the tracks for the LP. We did the LP in bits and pieces at CBS's studio just behind Oxford Street. You had a day to record two numbers - on eight-track, everything was done pretty much live."

"The Everlasting Love Affair" was a solid enough collection. Their first three CBS singles were joined by accomplished and memorable versions of "Hush" (Deep Purple), "The First Cut Is The Deepest" (Cat Stevens/P.P. Arnold), "Tobacco Road" (the Nashville Teens), Mike D'Abo's "Handbags And Gladrags" and a slow, rocked-up take on the Hayes/Porter soul favourite, "60 Minutes (Of Your Love)". A clutch of original songs (Ellis/Fisher's summer pop ditties, "Could I Be Dreaming" and "The Tree", and Mick Jackson's "Once Upon A Season") ended with a Small Faces-styled cockney knees-up, "Tale Of Two Bitters", on the 'joanna'. But, as Maurice recalls, "CBS's attitude was like, oh, it's just an album", and sales were correspondingly modest.

Before the album was completed, Morgan Fisher returned to the fold in summer '68, having finished the Sixth Form exams that had prompted his departure a year earlier. He'd initially been replaced by Pete Bardens (of Peter B's and Shotgun Express fame), before the arrival of a more regular keyboard player, the Leicester-born Lynton Guest (born 28/11/51). (Guest later formed English Rose, who recorded for Polydor and appeared in the pop culture exploitation movie, Groupie Girl). By mid-'66, guitarist Ian Miller had been substituted by Michael 'Georgie' George from Tottenham, who in turn made way for another London lad, Rex Charles Brayley (3/1/49), after the Decca 45. And Warwick Rose's role on bass had been filled by the Bradford-born Mick Jackson (born 27/1/50) in autumn '66; Warwick now sells medical insurance in Los Angeles.

Charisma
For two years, the Love Affair's faces were plastered across the bedrooms of teenage girls across the country as one of the nation's biggest pop bands, notching up singles sales to rival all but the Beatles. Though the band lacked the visual charisma of, say, the Stones or the Kinks, one particular facet made them unique - Steve Ellis's incredibly short fringe. In an age when hair went from over-the-ear to on-the-shoulder, the Love Affair's diminutive vocalist defiantly avoided long hair, like a male equivalent of Julie Driscoll.

Steve laughs: "It was dodgy, wasn't it? I had a crewcut when I was 14/15. When we started getting well known, we'd go to Carnaby Street and get kitted out in these weird, horrible clothes. When I finally wised up that they were diabolical, I went back to my Levi's. But I never got my hair cut anywhere. I kept razorcutting the front and left the rest as an outgrown crewcut. It's the weirdest haircut I've ever seen, now I look at it!

"We did this advert for a famous hairdressers, Teezy Weezy's, in this poncy Knightsbridge salon. He gets these wigs out - you're gonna be the pirate, you're gonna be the dandy. No f***ing way am I putting a wig on! Our driver was similar looking and build to me. So I said, I'm not 'avin' none of this, here's five quid, you do it. So he wore the wig. Now, this trailer went into the cinemas in '68/'69. 'Here we have the Love Affair modelling the new Teezy Weezy wigs!' It wasn't me but people came up and said nur nur, you had a wig on. It wasn't me, it was the driver - nah, don't gimme that. That was sad, the worst day of my life!"

Instead of Soho soul clubs, the Love Affair now embarked on a string of package tours. "We played with Status Quo - good lads - and Terry Reid, who was brilliant and a nice fella, too", recalls Ellis. "We became pals on a package tour - Gene Pitney, the Paper Dolls and the Ronnie Scott Band. We were touring constantly, flat out. It'd be, like, where the hell are we? We did a fantastic tour with Geno Washington and Amen Corner."

"We did a big show in Paisley with them", adds Maurice. "As we were going on, they were still shouting, 'Geno, Geno!' We did gigs with the Marmalade, the Tremeloes, Chicken Shack. We did a Scott Walker package tour - with Gun and Terry Reid - and another with Herman's Hermits. We also headlined a tour, supported by Dave Berry. We even went to Germany and did that Beat Club programme in Bremen."

Nice shirts, lads!

Despite their success, adverse coverage about the band not playing on their singles meant critics dismissed them as a throwaway, bubblegum pop band in an age when rock was growing increasingly serious. Steve frowns:

"We did a pre-recorded report on News At Ten once with the head of the Musician's Union. He questioned the band's authenticity, a string of expletives was forthcoming from us and the clip wasn't used. It's a common misconception that we were hyped. We wasn't.

"People thought we were manufactured, like the Monkees. That's bullshit. We were a gigging, functioning, up-and-running band. We got a lot of unfair flack. Morgan was a really good keyboard player and we were a tight little unit. But when it kicked into teenybop, you couldn't hear anything - ask Andy out of Amen Corner, the Small Faces, the Herd. It didn't matter what you played. It was just noise, complete chaos. You'd have to back a car up to get in the venue - and straight out. It was dangerous. Kids used to pull chunks off your hair."

By summer 1969, the cracks were showing. Maurice: "We were very obnoxious (laughs). The excesses affected different people in different ways. I've never taken drugs because my father was into health foods and yoga. But drink and drugs did come into the equation, which affected some more than others. Basically, the whole thing went pear-shaped."

That December, Steve Ellis announced his departure, live onstage at the Mayfair Ballroom, Newcastle. Why? Steve pauses: "Let's just say unfair distribution of funds. I was doing most of the recording and interviews. The stage show was mad. It was so physically demanding, like James Brown - double dynamite. I really went for it. At the Tottenham Royal, I'd swing on the curtains, across the chandeliers - anything went to make a good show.

"As you get older, you wise up. Towards the end, I thought, we're getting totally roasted here. It doesn't feel right. They said stay on, we'll give you X amount. No, I said, you're robbing us, I don't want to work with you. I always had an affinity with Morgan but I wanted to get into singing more. During gigs, you couldn't hear what you were singing. You weren't getting any musical payback. It was like Beatlemania. So I thought, I've got to walk."

Maurice remembers it differently: "Afterwards, CBS offered Steve a big deal to stay on the label as a solo artist - I think they gave him ten grand. That's why he stayed on CBS. Steve was getting fidgety. It was always him and us - well, Steve was a bit out there and some of the excesses were setting in. It was weird. We were all getting fed up with it and there was a bit of bad blood.

"The problem was, we started as a credible band and then became this sort of joke - with the stigma of not playing on the singles. Things were changing, too. We played with the Episode Six, a pop harmony band like the Beach Boys, and suddenly they were Deep Purple (laughs) and we wanted that same credibility. Steve did as well. Singers always get affected more. I can hide behind a drum kit but the vocalist is, like, naked out front and takes everything personally - good or bad - because they're the front person.

"We had a big meeting in my father's warehouse one day. Steve said, I'm going, I'm fed up with all this. And none of us were really upset. We breathed a sigh of relief, although we knew it was pretty disastrous. So Steve left, with our manager John Cokell. And we were still only on £35 a week - when the average wage was about £25."

In Steve's absence, the Love Affair struggled to maintain their profile. "We got Gus [Auguste] Eadon in from the Elastic Band", says Bacon, "a really good frontman". Eadon structured his stage act in the style of Ian Anderson, frontman with rising stars Jethro Tull, which helped cultivate a more serious image. "My father carried on co-managing with Ken Street, ex-guitarist with Emile Ford & the Checkmates. We then changed our name to L.A. for our second album, 'New Day By L.A.'."

Their first public appearance was a slightly disdainful performance on Top Of The Pops, miming to their lengthy (4.08) new single, "Speak Of Peace, Sing Of Joy". "But that didn't work", admits Maurice, "so we reverted back to Love Affair again!". Less than a year after Steve's departure, CBS dropped the band, prompting a move to Parlophone for two scarce 45s in 1971.

Maurice Bacon: "Eventually, Morgan Fisher and I left to form a new band, Morgan, with Tim Staffell, the singer before Freddie Mercury in Queen [or Smile, as they were then called], and Bob Sapsead, the bass player from another band my father managed, Springfield Park." In 1973, Morgan issued a rare prog rock album, "Nova Solis", on RCA. Maurice laughs: "We did the total opposite of pop - it was so obscure! We were into 13/6 rhythms, the whole hog. Another album which RCA didn't release, 'Brown Out', was eventually the first album on Cherry Red."

Fisher then joined Mott The Hoople (and also played with the Third Ear Band) before creating some of Cherry Red's most bizarre music as a solo artist in the early '80s. In 1983, he was employed by Queen as an auxiliary musician on a world tour - and he now lives in Japan. Bacon, meanwhile, formed Ultimate Records and worked closely with that loveable new wave nerd, John Otway, who wrote Morgan Fisher's "Geneve" single. Mick Jackson, meanwhile, made a very good living teaching budding car salesmen.

Without Morgan and Maurice, the Love Affair foundered into obscurity, issuing a one-off single on Pye in 1973 before reuniting with Philip Goodhand-Tait for "Private Lives", a lone release on Creole in 1977. However, neither these releases, nor subsequent touring bands, featured a single original member of the Love Affair.