Outasight! What It Takes to Get the Stones Rolling : Pop: A crew of 240 handles the scaffolding and the sound, lighting and video equipment. Each concert will burn 2.4 million watts.

The sounds could have been from any construction site. From seven stories up came the clang of steel against steel, punctuated by wolf whistles and catcalls directed at young women walking by below.

But that was Monday afternoon at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Tonight, the edifice will ring with “Steel Wheels” and cries of “awright” and “whooo!” from one Michael Phillip Jagger, who will be fronting the Rolling Stones on the first of the venerable rock institution’s four nights at the stadium.

The focus of the more than 280,000 people expected at the shows will be on Jagger and his four Stones mates. Few will give much, if any, thought to what went in to mounting the event.

Michael Ahern, however, will be thinking of little else. He’s the production coordinator for the Stones’ “Steel Wheels” tour--the band’s first U.S. tour in seven years.

Nearly 3 million people are expected to see the band during the 3 1/2-month tour that began Aug. 31 in Philadelphia and ends Dec. 14 in Montreal. The expected box office gross for the tour: a cool $90 million.

Ahern is in charge of making sure everything is ready in each city when the Stones step on stage and begin playing “Start Me Up,” the show’s opening number.

Among his daily concerns: overseeing the 240-strong construction and technical crews, the 800,000 pounds--10 semi trucks worth--of steel scaffolding that supports the elaborate stage (including the 50-foot inflatable woman who makes an appearance during the show), and the sound, lighting and video equipment that will eat up 2.4 million watts of electricity each night.

A cheerful man with a Brillo pad of graying hair, Ahern was so relaxed Monday as he stood on the Coliseum field and pronounced everything was on schedule that he couldn’t resist jokingly exaggerating the cultural importance of this undertaking.

“All this stuff,” he said, waving at the stage-in-progress, “is to project an environment. If you think of L.A. as being the center of civilization that it is, and you think of the Coliseum as being the head and the stage as a crown on which the Rolling Stones--the jewel--is placed.”

Ahern can be forgiven for taking the endeavor in humorous stride--he’s something of a pioneer of the big stadium shows. A 20-year veteran of rock concert staging, the former stage manager of New York’s old Fillmore East has overseen three previous Stones tours, David Bowie’s 1983 and 1988 shows and such trail-blazing work as last year’s Amnesty International stadium dates in cities such as New Delhi, where major Western rock shows had never been staged.

This set of shows will be the second time the Coliseum has hosted four nights of one act. Bruce Springsteen played four nights in 1985 to a total audience of more than 320,000. (Capacity varies with the placement of the stage and sound equipment.) The Stones’ shows may well be the biggest Ahern has worked on, but it’s not the hardest.

“It’s more stuff,” he said. “But people are more used to it now, and the facilities and promoters and local crews are more into it because of the success of past productions by such groups as the Stones, Bowie, Pink Floyd and Genesis, who have tried to make big statements with the shows.

“At first on this tour, all the bits and pieces took a lot of working out,” Ahern said of the process that began last year with Jagger and drummer Charlie Watts presenting the initial design concepts for the urban decay set. “Now people know the specifics. Things like production and construction are actually fairly orderly now.”

Peter Luukko, the Coliseum and Sports Arena general manager, called this the “biggest show ever in terms of the size of the stage and the magnitude of the act.” He was impressed by how smoothly the set-up was going, but he too said it has become routine.

“Rock ‘n’ roll has grown up,” he said. “The promoters, facilities, acts, police and fire--pretty much work together now. Promoters and the acts have matured in terms of safety and those concerns, while the police have mellowed to the point where they’re more in tune with peer security.”

Luukko did add that some measures are taken to adapt procedures to specific shows and anticipated audiences. For example, no alcohol will be sold at the Coliseum for these shows, due to the young audience that second-billed Guns N’ Roses draws. And the scheduling of the Coliseum and Sports Arena presents further problems.

In the five-day span of the Stones shows, the Sports Arena will be hosting a Clippers preseason basketball game, a volleyball exhibition and a professional wrestling match. And with the Raiders having played football at at the Coliseum last Sunday, the Stones crew was left with just two and a half days for what is normally a four-day set-up time.

“Before (Raider player) Bo Jackson was in the locker room, we were laying plywood on the field,” Luukko said.

Ahern also had to deal with other details that may seem mundane, but could cause considerable contention if not handled smoothly. As he stood at the base of the stage, he viewed the large Miller High Life sign that adorns the Coliseum scoreboard directly behind the stage. The problem: the Stones tour is sponsored by Budweiser.

“It’s not because it’s Miller and not Budweiser,” Ahern explained. “Buildings have agreements (with their sponsors) and you can’t mess with it. But if it’s part of the stage picture like this, you might try to deal with it.”

But those are problems that can be dealt with. What is the biggest headache for Ahern at each stop of the tour is something that seems like mere minutia, but is nonetheless a persistent annoyance.

“Backstage passes, parking passes and T-shirts,” he moaned. “People are always asking me, ‘Can I get a T-shirt?’ ”

Parking lots open for tonight’s 6 p.m. show at 3 p.m., with stadium gates scheduled to open an hour later. The music begins with Living Colour, the New York-based quartet that is the opening act on all the stops on the tour.

Guns N’ Roses, the Los Angeles-based hard-rock group that is only joining the Stones for these Coliseum dates, will follow at 7:30 p.m., followed by the Stones around 9 p.m. The band’s sets on other tour stops have been as long as 2 1/2 hours. The schedule’s the same for Thursday, but the Saturday and Sunday shows each begin at 3:30 p.m. There is no show Friday.

Though there were questions about the Stones’ ability to be effective after a 7-year layoff, reviews of the veteran band’s shows (most of the members are in their mid to late 40s) have been almost uniformly strong.

TICKETS Approximately 1,000 tickets remain available through Ticketmaster for tonight’s Rolling Stones concert, though they’re all near the back. The Thursday, Saturday and Sunday shows are sold out. Seats for all nights, and in all sections, are available through local ticket brokers--if you are willing to pay for them. A survey of brokers came up with a range going from seats in the first 10 rows (for between $600 and $700) to near the back (as low as $50). Thursday tickets are most plentiful, while the weekend shows are harder to come by.