Unhip & Quite Content : Hootie & the Blowfish openly adore Paul McCartney, don’t even <i> try </i> to be hip and have no plans to leave South Carolina.

The first thing you should know about Hootie & the Blowfish is that the members of this band are Paul McCartney fans. Rabid, shameless, utterly unapologetic Paul McCartney fans. Many artists in their 20s and early 30s lean toward Lennon and won’t even give McCartney his due as a Beatle. But these guys will give it up for--gasp--McCartney’s post- Beatles work. Wings and the whole nine yards.

“McCartney’s incredible, man,” says guitarist Mark Bryan, sitting with two of his three bandmates in a conference room at Atlantic Records’ Manhattan offices. “He can do anything,” agrees bassist Dean Felber. But Darius Rucker articulates his enthusiasm most vividly. “If Paul McCartney walked into this room right now,” the cherubic singer says, “I would [soil] my pants.”

Their candor on this subject, like their goofy name, suggests that Hootie & the Blowfish--which also includes drummer Jim (Soni) Sonefeld--aren’t exactly preoccupied with cultivating a hip image. With their major-label debut album, “Cracked Rear View” (on Atlantic), these clean-cut, affable musicians have parlayed simple, accessible hooks, basic blues-rock textures and an unpretentious attitude into sales exceeding 3 million and, last week, to the No. 1 spot on the charts.

Clearly, Hootie’s no-nonsense approach is in a very different tradition from that of Pearl Jam and its peers, who wear their plain clothes like badges of honor and are guided by the post-punk ethic dictating that the best rock ‘n’ roll is the most challenging. In contrast, Hootie & the Blowfish seem naturally, casually laid-back and unaffected, and they write and play songs that any bar crowd weaned on classic rock could sink into like a comfortable old shoe.

In fact, the band--which will play July 22 at the Greek Theatre and July 23 at the Open Air Theatre in San Diego--cut its teeth on such audiences. After joining forces at the University of South Carolina in the mid-’80s, the four musicians, whose ages range from 27 to 30, started building a following by appearing at establishments near the dorm. After graduating together six years ago, they got a couple of cars and began touring bars and clubs around the country.

Not that this course of action was decided on easily. For one thing, all of the men had planned on pursuing careers outside of music. “Dean was a finance and marketing major,” Rucker says. “Soni was media arts, and Mark and I were both broadcast journalism.”

Soon afterward, Hootie formed its own management company and recorded a self-titled album independently. Two more records, “Time” and “Kootchypop,” followed in 1992 and 1993, respectively. By now, the band had cultivated a considerable grass-roots following mostly through relentless touring. The musicians began pursuing record companies, but not that actively, Rucker insists. “We weren’t beating down doors. We just sent our tapes out, got our rejection letters, and kept playing.”

When “Kootchypop,” an EP featuring two tracks that would later appear on “Cracked Rear View”--including the Top 10 single “Hold My Hand”--sold 60,000 copies, executives from major labels suddenly came courting. Eventually, Atlantic Records scooped the band up and released “Cracked” last July.

“They play what I consider straight-down-the-middle American music,” says Val Azzo li, president of the Atlantic Group, in explaining what drew him to Hootie. “No one has really done that for a while, not since John Mellencamp and Bob Seger.”

Still, at least one factor distinguishes Hootie & the Blowfish from most other heartland rockers: Rucker is black. And while his throaty delivery seems more in the over-the-top spirit of a flamboyant rock singer than the nuanced tradition of a soul man, Hootie’s frontman cites R&B; heroes as his biggest influences.

“Al Green’s the man,” he says, smiling. “And Otis [Redding] is the man. I remember listening to a lot of Smokey [Robinson], a lot of Gladys [Knight] and the Pips. All that Motown and Stax stuff, my mom used to listen to it all the time. And it just stuck with me over the years.”

But Rucker insists that racial and cultural differences have never been an issue for Hootie--at least not where the band members themselves are concerned. “We never really thought about being an interracial band,” he says, “until [journalists] started writing about it. We’ve been a band for 10 years. . . . There were times when things got stupid--you know, we were playing, and somebody [in the audience] said something stupid. But we played mostly college towns and college bars, so that was cool. . . . And race has never been a factor to us.”

I t certainly hasn’t diminished the breadth of the group’s appeal. The videos for “Hold My Hand” and a second single, “Let Her Cry,” have enjoyed heavy rotation on both MTV and its post-adolescent cousin VH1. In fact, VH1 appears to be grooming Hootie as one of the stars of its revised, less conservative format, much as it has done with such other recently broken artists as Sheryl Crow and Counting Crows.

All this success hasn’t spoiled the Hootie crew much. True, the guys have exchanged their touring van for a more cushy bus. In other respects, though, they seem almost perversely determined to keep their lifestyles as simple and modest as possible. For instance, they claim to have no interest in luxury real estate. Let other fledgling rock gods have their Manhattan penthouse suites, their Malibu beach houses, their villas in the Caribbean. Hootie & the Blowfish never plan to leave Columbia, S.C.

“Why would we?” asks Felber. “There’s a good scene in Columbia. That’s why I think a lot of bands from smaller towns are now staying where they’re from. I’ve seen so many bands move to New York, or L.A., or Nashville, thinking that because there’s a music scene there they’ll make it quicker or easier. And most of them wind up moving back home within two years.”

Says Atlantic’s Azzoli, “With Hootie & the Blowfish, what you see is what you get. They haven’t changed in all the time I’ve known them, and that’s part of their charm.”

S uch charm hasn’t worked on everyone. For all the good fortune that Hootie has enjoyed over the past year, Rucker admits that the band’s hipness quotient isn’t exactly up there in the stratosphere. “Details magazine ran this quote,” the singer recalls, “saying that if rock ‘n’ roll were on strike, we’d be the replacement players.”

While relaying this insult, Rucker laughs easily--as he and his bandmates do often. Clearly, Hootie & the Blowfish are quite comfortable being a bunch of wholesome, easy-going dudes who love sports, practical jokes and, yes, Paul McCartney. And the fans who will flock to large clubs and theaters to catch their headlining tour this summer are probably comfortable with it too.

“It’s hard to bother us,” Rucker says. “We traveled in a van together for four to five hours a day, 300 days a year. That made us hard, in a way. And since we’ve come this far, it doesn’t matter what you say about us now.”*

* Hootie & the Blowfish play July 22 at the Greek Theatre, 2700 N. Vermont Ave., 7:30 p.m. $17.50. (213) 480-3232. Also July 23 at the Open Air Theatre, San Diego State University, 8 p.m. $17.50. (619) 594-6947.