Berne Williams was the guitarist and vocalist in the Authentics, a band that is all but forgotten now, but was very popular amongst the Marquee crowd in the early Sixties. He went on to have a career as a graphic artist and is currently setting up an Authentics website. He is on the look-out for old Authentics pictures and memorabilia, so please get in touch if you have anything!
Unfortunately, the Authentics are a bit of a ‘lost band’, mainly because our manager, Giorgio Gomelsky, just didn’t like us! His right hand man, Hamish Grimes, discovered us playing at the Scene Club one Friday night when Giorgio was on holiday and signed us up immediately to support the Yardbirds [who Gomelsky and Hamish also managed] at the Marquee. I think it was about the second week they were playing there and they were desperate for a support group. When Giorgio got back, it was a done deal and we were signed as the resident support band for the Yardbirds for Friday nights at the Marquee.
Hamish Grimes was a very special person, a real character, liked and respected by the music community. He unfortunately died in 1987 and is sadly missed by all who knew him.
The Authentics all came from Bedford. It was just myself on lead guitar and vocals, my brother John on bass guitar and lead vocals, and a drummer called Stewart Collins, and we started off at a church youth club. It was very strange, because we performed the youth club on the Thursday night to an enthusiastic audience of old school friends and on the Saturday night, we played at a really wild American bar in the High Street, the Silver Grill, where all the Americans from the local air base went. It was a bit like the Blues Brothers; they had bouncers walking up and down with baseball bats, and if the audience didn’t like you, they threw things at you!
From there, we played a little basement club called the Ready Steady Go Club, off Soho Square. Somebody from the Scene club came down to see us there and booked us for that Friday night to replace the Animals who couldn”t make it, and that’s where Hamish saw us and booked us. So we went from performing in Bedford to the West End in three or four weeks.