He named his daughter after a Clapton classic, built stages for music legends, and once crashed a forklift at Claudelands. From Waikato roots to global tours, Chris Beehan’s journey is anything but ordinary, writes Mary Anne Gill.
Chris Beehan inside Stageset’s Rukuhia warehouse. Photo: Mary Anne Gill
The first hint of Chris Beehan’s global connections comes when he says his daughter’s name is Layla.
As in the Eric Clapton hit song, The News asks.
“He was my hero growing up,” Beehan, 56, who plays lead guitar himself in a local band called Amnesiaxs or ‘forgetful old pricks’, as he prefers to call them.
Years ago, he helped build a stage for Clapton at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
“He was a really nice guy. I ended up getting to work with his guitar tech, so I got to touch (Clapton’s) guitars and everything.
“At the end of the show, we were packing up and he’d done a run of nights at the Albert Hall, and he came running across the stage and we talked for about 10 minutes.
“He was lovely, amazing, asked me all about my upbringing and we started talking about the blues and all sorts of stuff. It absolutely blew me away that he had the time because if he had just said ‘get out of my way’ it would have destroyed me.”
Eric “Slowhand” Clapton, 1974. Photo: F. Antolín Hernandez – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
When Beehan and his fiancée Shinobu had their first child 15 years ago, they named her Layla.
Born in Hamilton to Patrick and Pamela Beehan, Chris grew up in Tamahere and Mātangi. His father, a renowned plastic surgeon, founded the Waikato Regional Plastic Surgery and Maxillofacial Unit. Chris, however, had different ambitions than medicine, unlike his siblings.
Waikato Business News June 2025
Susannah – who was the first female dux at St Paul’s Collegiate in 1990 – became a surgeon in the US and is now in Christchurch. Brigid is a quality assurance advisor and educator for the New Zealand College of Midwives and a lead maternity carer in Auckland.
After attending St Mary’s Catholic, Marist Intermediate, Hamilton Boys’, and Hillcrest High, Beehan left school at 17. He worked at Ruapehu and Queenstown before moving to London in 1994. There, he spent a decade touring the world, building stage sets for some of the biggest names in music.
Over his 24-year career, Beehan managed stage builds for:
- Michael Jackson’s HIStory World Tour (1996)
- Paul McCartney’s Back in the World Tour (2003)
- 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games (Opening & Closing Ceremonies)
- Madonna’s Japan Tour (2006)
- Six60’s sold-out shows at Claudelands and Eden Park (2021).
Electric Avenue Festival in Christchurch.
Wildlands Festival, Australia’s biggest one day festival.
Festival One 2020
He met Shinobu in Melbourne during the Commonwealth Games project. The couple got engaged on Christmas Eve 2007 and later moved to Sydney.
Today, Beehan co-owns Stageset, a stage construction company with warehouses across Australia – Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and soon Melbourne – and in Rukuhia, near Hamilton Airport. He holds 60 per cent of the company alongside fellow Kiwi Mataio Alefosio.
Stageset has a focus on New Zealand and Australia but has just picked up a stadium-sized roof project in Japan. Recent projects include Luke Combs at Eden Park, upcoming builds for Kendrick Lamar and Lady Gaga and a massive stage at King’s Park, Perth.
They’re also the preferred supplier for shows at the Sydney Opera House which makes Jetstar’s Hamilton to Sydney flights – launching this month – a bonus for him given his regular trips across the Tasman.
Beehan credits much of his success to Kiwi ingenuity.
“We designed a lifting system using truck workshop lifters to raise stage roofs – no one else in the world does that,” he says.
Their system avoids traditional bolts, using pins and clamps instead.
The stage for Crowded House in Napier.
The Download Festival in Donington Park, home of heavy metal rock in the UK.
Synthony featuring Cyril Riley, an Australian DJ and producer who has become famous in the underground electronic scene.
“It’s like Meccano except we don’t use bolts because as soon as you thread them on, they get threaded. So, we use pins, you can bang them in with a hammer. Just about all our gear is about a scaffold clamp or a pin. It’s simple, just masses of the same stuff.”
After Covid, Beehan felt the pull of home. He had long owned a piece of land at Manu Bay in Raglan, bought during his London years. “My family always asked why I held onto it. I told them, ‘It’s beautiful, overlooking the ocean’.”
He promised to build his dream home there and if they hated it, he’d sell and move. They moved in last month. His son Benjamin, 12, a keen surfer, especially loves it.
The process of building a stage might seem complicated but Beehan describes it as simple with the right planning.
It starts with building a stage deck, structural stuff, scaffolding, the steel, and all the fabric and waterproofing for the stage.
Though no longer on the tools – “The boys tell me to go home. I crashed the forklift into the light post at Claudelands a few years ago and they told me to just give it up.”
Stageset Hamilton Airport – Brothers Izaak, left, and Aidan Redley of Fairfield, Hamilton with Chris Beehan, centre. Photo: Mary Anne Gill
Beehan now manages the company’s finances and culture.
“I do drive down the streets of Hamilton and think back to when I was 18 and saying to myself ‘I’m never coming back here’.”
His philosophy is simple: “If you’re all about people, the money follows.”
He’s known for giving people a chance. “If someone asks for a job, I give them a go. One day to prove themselves, then it’s up to them.”
Some of Stageset’s full-time staff in Australia are part of a profit-share scheme – and will receive a cut if the business is ever sold.
“They’re all lifers,” he says. “They’re in for the long term.”
One suspects Beehan is too.
Stageset Hamilton Airport – Chris Beehan. Photo: Mary Anne Gill
