Essential New Zealand Albums: Collision

The roots of Collision can be traced to Tokoroa, where brothers Hirra and Ali Morgan and cousins Colin Henry and Charley Hikuroa formed a band called Shriek Machine.

By 1973, the four had relocated to Wellington. Joined by keyboard player Philip Whitcher, they renamed themselves Collision.

The band took up a residency at a basement bar in Manners St, known the Speakeasy, where they fast built a reputation as the best club band in town. Where else could you even hear music by the likes of Earth, Wind & Fire or James Brown?

They were also winning the respect of some of the city’s jazz players, with whom they would hang out and jam at bars like the 1860 and after-hours haunts like the Musicians Club.

It was through this loose network that Collision met trumpet player Mike Booth, who would join the band in 1975, and in combination with Hirra Morgan’s saxophone gave them a tight, punchy horn sound.

This six-piece Collision was exactly what Dalvanius Prime was looking for when the Sydney-based singer returned to New Zealand with his vocal group The Fascinations for a national tour.

After the tour, Collision took Dalvanius’s advice and followed him back to Sydney. But after Wellington, Sydney – and specifically the Kings Cross area, where they would both live and play – was something of a contrast.

Mike Booth remembers: “They had put us up at a nearby kind of hotel, sort of apartment building that had a strip club on the ground floor, which was certainly very new to me. I think it was new to everyone in the band. And we were up on like, maybe the first floor, second floor in some rooms, and then the trannies lived another floor above somewhere, and the prostitutes and whatnot, that was a bit of an eye opener. But I loved it, you know, in the sense that it was doing something, going somewhere, you know, and it’s pretty energising.”

Dragon and MiSex, fellow Kiwi expats with whom they would cross paths, were already signed to Australian labels and making records, and Collision would soon follow suit.

The material they recorded for their only album was a combination of songs they had been playing in the clubs, songs by other New Zealand artists, and songs they had written themselves, specifically with recording in mind.

Collision was signed to the Australian label Festival, and their self-titled album was recorded at Festival’s own studio in Sydney.

Overseeing production was a man named Richard Batchens, Festival’s in-house producer. Though he had engineered the first Split Enz album, Mental Notes, Batchens’ greatest Australian chart successes had been with his productions for Aussie acts like Sherbet, Richard Clapton and Cold Chisel.

He had never worked with a band like Collision, though. And Collision’s introduction to Batchens was unlike anything they had experienced either.

That first meeting took place one night backstage at the Kings Cross club where the group was performing.

Hirra Morgan recalls: “This guy comes through the door while we’re having a break, and he thought he might surprise us. Suddenly, there was this big, sort of 18-inch knife on the table, and he picked that up and sort of came into the room and started swinging this knife around and, like, freaked us out. We’re wondering, who’s this guy coming in with the knife? So we’re up with the chairs, and we’re gonna attack this guy. God knows what was in his head.”

Mike Booth adds: “I mean, if he hadn’t sort of, then, kind of laughed it off or indicated that it was a sort of a joke, I’m not sure what the next action might have, might have been. I think because it was so bizarre, we didn’t sort of react at first like we didn’t take it that seriously, because it was just too kind of out there.”

Once Batchens and Collision got into the studio, there didn’t seem to be any further incidents. He was all business, working to capture on tape the group’s super-tight arrangements of their own songs, as well as reinventions of such soul classics as Ray Charles’ ‘What’d I Say’.

Being based in Australia certainly afforded Collision some new opportunities, cutting the album being just one. They also did some major tours, opening for international headliners like The Commodores, Tina Turner, the Spinners and Osibisa.

But less than a year after the album’s release, Collision was no more.

In Mike Booth’s opinion, the album may even have been a catalyst in hastening the group’s demise.

“I think it changed the band because I think it really brought home that the kind of music we were playing then was not Australia’s favourite music. We sort of had been living on a bit of a hope and a prayer up to that point in terms of what we were doing and looking for sort of a little bit more traction, and the sort of echo of empty rooms in terms of the promotion side made us realise that actually our audience wasn’t that big, and Australians really preferred rock music, and that was where the real popularity was.

“But when I came back to New Zealand and spoke to a few musician colleagues, they were very complimentary about the record. I was quite surprised about that, because that hadn’t been the review that I’d received from anyone else in Australia.”

It’s a bitter irony that New Zealanders, though more receptive to the type of music Collision made, never got to hear the band live in this final phase.

Though Festival did release the album in Aotearoa, with the group not here to promote it, it largely disappeared under the radar.

Yet, over the years, as new generations of soul and funk fans discover it, it’s come to be recognised as a classic, and original copies have become highly sought after.