Rockin’ the Town Before Other Cats : Pop: Robert Gordon and Chris Spedding, who perform tonight at the Coach House, were playing the real thing back when the Strays were just kittens.

Guitarist Chris Spedding had been playing rock ‘n’ roll for about 20 years when singer Robert Gordon called on him in 1978 to join the early rumblings of the American rockabilly revival.

At the time, Spedding was one of the top session musicians in England, having played everything from lightweight pop with Gilbert O’Sullivan to heavy-hitting avant-garde rock with Eno and John Cale. He’d also been in on the ground floor of the British punk rock explosion, having produced the Sex Pistols’ earliest demo recordings.

When Gordon’s record producer called him, Spedding, looking to relocate to the United States, was interested. He just needed to know one thing: What’s this “rockabilly?”

“I found out it’s what I’d known all along,” he recalled over the phone recently. “We just called it rock ‘n’ roll.

“Scotty Moore licks was the first stuff I’d played. I’d started out playing Elvis (whose early recordings featured Moore on lead guitar), Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. It was kind of a conscious regression when I played rockabilly.”

Gordon--who is teaming again with Spedding on a tour that brings them to the Coach House tonight--had been on the ground floor of rockabilly revivalism in 1977. Joined then by Link Wray, an ace ‘50s rock guitarist who had enjoyed instrumental hits with “‘Rumble” and “Raw-Hide,” he was trying to instill new vigor into a style that had been relegated to moldy-oldies status since the early ‘60s.

Gordon had been given a good grounding in rock ‘n’ roll roots as a teen-ager, growing up in the Washington, D.C., area.

“As a kid, I was continually listening to music,” the 45-year-old singer recalled in a separate interview. “In my early teens I’d go to the Howard Theatre in Washington. We’d pay a buck and a half and you’d see six amazing acts--people like James Brown, Otis Redding, the Temptations and all the girl groups.”

Gordon kicked around D.C. in bar bands before moving to New York in the early ‘70s with his wife and two children (his former high school sweetheart, Gordon’s wife had been his date at those Howard Theatre shows). After a few years working in non-musical jobs that Gordon said he didn’t want to mention, he got back into the music scene singing with Tuff Darts, part of the New York new wave scene that also included such bands as Blondie and Talking Heads.

“I’d just broken up with my wife and I was angry, and (new wave) was a real good venue for me” to rant a bit, he said. But after a year or so with Tuff Darts, he went off on his own and began applying his deep, resonant voice to a repertoire of old rockabilly and R&B; songs by the likes of Cochran, Carl Perkins and Huey “Piano” Smith.

He also adopted the classic ‘50s look, with a greased pompadour and long sideburns. In 1977 and 1978, his albums “Robert Gordon With Link Wray” and “Fresh Fish Special” presaged a rockabilly and roots rock revival that took hold firmly in the early ‘80s when such bands as the Stray Cats, the Blasters and X began to make their mark.

Nowadays, Gordon’s ‘50s-delinquent look, and some of the ‘50s musical sources he drew upon, are quite the rage on the Orange County rock scene, where they’ve been crossed with punk rock strains by bands such as Social Distortion and Cadillac Tramps.

Gordon’s second album included the first recording of “Fire,” a Bruce Springsteen song that later became a huge hit for the Pointer Sisters.

“I met (Springsteen) on the streets of New York,” Gordon said. “We became friends, and he gave me the song. I think he might have written it for me, but I’m not sure. He did specifically tell me that he thought it would be a good song for me to do.” Unfortunately, Gordon’s recording of “Fire” lacked the requisite drama and wallop to make it a hit, leaving the field open for the Pointer Sisters to milk it for the theatrics that his too-cool version shunned.

It wasn’t Gordon, but the Stray Cats who turned rockabilly into a mass phenomenon and launched a thousand bands with bass fiddles. Their hits “Rock This Town” and “Stray Cat Strut” were original tunes rendered in the old style, as opposed to Gordon’s repertoire of mostly ‘50s remakes.

“They were kids coming to our gigs,” Gordon said of the Stray Cats, who hailed from nearby Long Island when he was a fixture on the New York club scene. “They’d never heard of rock ‘n’ roll in their lives,” he added in a dismissive tone.

Gordon said that to his knowledge the Stray Cats have never credited him as an influence. “I couldn’t care less. They’re the Sha Na Na of rockabilly music, if you ask me. I inevitably get that question (about links between himself and the Stray Cats), and it’s a little annoying. They try to do the re-creation of that style, and that doesn’t appeal to me. I had no intention of re-creating that sound or I wouldn’t have brought people like Chris Spedding into the band, because he’s a very modern player. I wanted to take it to a different place than that ricky-ticky sound.”

As Gordon went along, he began to record more contemporary material, including the first recording of “Someday, Someway,” the song that launched the career of its writer, Marshall Crenshaw. Over the past three years, Gordon said, he has started for the first time to write songs of his own.

“I’ve got 30 new songs I’ve written, and I’m really happy about them. I hadn’t really written prior to that. But I collaborated with a couple of people and got more experience. It isn’t a career move; I guess I was just ready to express myself after 45 years. It’s got a different sort of vibe. The new stuff is not rockabilly oriented.”

He said he plans to start looking for a contract to record his new songs, some of which were written with Spedding. Gordon’s last album, “Greetings From New York City,” was a compilation of live recordings and older, previously unreleased studio tracks put out by the French label New Rose.

Spedding, who turns 48 next week, entered Gordon’s rockabilly orbit when the singer decided to record “Wild Women,” a song from one of Spedding’s albums from the ‘70s. Gordon’s producer, Richard Gottehrer, invited the Englishman to play on the session, and the partnership has continued fairly steadily during the past 13 years, except for a few years’ gap in the early ‘80s when the Gordon band’s guitar slot was held by Washington, D.C., guitar hero Danny Gatton.

While Gordon describes Spedding admiringly as a “chameleon” who can blend with any rock style, Spedding is matter-of-fact about his approach. “I just play what I play, and if somebody’s playing a certain type of music, I’ll fit in with it. All that stuff about me being so versatile is bull.”

Like Gordon, who was willing to adopt a look that was 20 years out of date during the ‘70s, Spedding says he was something of a fashion renegade on the British rock scene--which is how he came in contact with the fledgling Sex Pistols.

“The clothes I was wearing were pretty punk,” said Spedding, “biker jackets and leather, and I had short hair in the days when everybody was blow-dried. I was one of the few musicians around (in the mid-’70s) who was anticipating punk.” He said he used to buy outfits at Sex, the London boutique owned by Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols’ manager. “McLaren kept saying, ‘You’ve got to see the band.’ I said, ‘What do you know about music? You’re just the guy who makes my clothes.’ ”

But when Chrissie Hynde, later of the Pretenders, also suggested that Spedding see the Pistols, he went to one of their riotous shows. “I thought they weren’t as bad as everyone thought. I thought they were good and deserved a break.” Spedding is rumored to have played on some of the Pistols’ early recordings, but he says, “I just produced the first demo tape that got them the deal.”

Spedding currently has a 24-song retrospective album, “Motorbikin’,” available as a British import, as well as a new album, “Cafe Days,” that also has yet to see a U.S. release.

The new material he and Gordon have been working on together “is more R&B; stuff,” Spedding said. “The next time he gets into a studio situation, it’s not going to sound that much like the rockabilly stuff, except for his voice.

“He’s more versatile than you think. If he likes a song, he can sing the hell out of it. But people tend to want to hear the rockabilly stuff, so we lean heavily on that” in concert.

Spedding said he’s happy playing the old music that he always knew but couldn’t always name. “We try to make it interesting by changing tempos and doing different numbers. I can take off and do whatever I like” in the stripped-down instrumental trio format. “As long as there’s a bit of danger in it so I don’t get too bored. If you’re terrified of playing a bad note, it’ll put an edge on your playing.”

* Robert Gordon and Chris Spedding, the Jitters and the Strangers play tonight at the Coach House, 3157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Show time: 8 p.m. Tickets: $15. Information: (714) 496-8930.