Not what you might expect

FOR a 20-year-old from Paisley, Scotland, Paolo Nutini already has some war stories.

Take, for example, his opening slot for the Rolling Stones last summer in Vienna. “There were about 50,000 hard-core Stones fans who all paid about 200 euros per ticket, and they were told just before the Stones came on, ‘Here’s a Scottish guy with an Italian name that you’ve never heard of -- goodbye!’ ” Nutini recalls in a lilting brogue from a recent tour stop in Nashville. “I came off stage after our set and thought, ‘Wow, I’m not sure how I did.’ ”

Apparently, he fared well. “I spoke to the Stones backstage....Keith [Richards] just said to me, ‘Keep it all goin’ on down the line,” and he gave me a sort of wink,” Nutini says. “Then Mick [Jagger] said, ‘Who’s the Italian one?’ I explained how my great-grandfather is from Tuscany, and that it’s our family name and all that, and he just said, ‘If we knew you were Scottish, we wouldn’t have booked ya!’ ”

Jagger, of course, was joking. The Stones asked the soulful Scotsman to open for them again in England.

So it goes for Nutini, who has been called the next James Blunt and has been compared with the likes of Jeff Buckley, Al Green and Rod Stewart. Songs like the upbeat, guitar-driven “Jenny Don’t Be Hasty,” with its irresistible chorus in a voice that sounds twice its singer’s age, offer ample evidence of why Atlantic Records offered a reported seven-figure, five-record deal to the teenager two years ago. In support of the first album in that deal, “These Streets,” Nutini is nearing the end of a monthlong North American tour that has sold out in virtually every city, even after gigs were moved to larger venues to accommodate brisk ticket sales. That includes his L.A. show Friday at the Avalon.

But Nutini’s reputation as a fantastic live act, and the success of the current single, “New Shoes,” on VH1 has yet to translate into Blunt-like sales for Atlantic. “These Streets” is at No. 163 on the Billboard charts (53,000 copies sold) and after a top-50 debut.

“Well, you know, that’s why we are touring here, to be honest,” Nutini says with a sigh. The singer has been so busy feeding fans’ thirst for his music in Europe and England (where the album sold 100,000 in its first two weeks) that touring the U.S. was almost an afterthought.

IT was American music, though, that first inspired Nutini to become a songwriter.

“The first record I was really into was the Drifters’ ‘When My Little Girl Is Smiling,’ ” he says. “My mom and dad had that [record], and that song in particular just moved me.

“The song just seemed to rise and fall with Ben E. King’s vocals.... I must have been only 8 years old, but nothing could keep me from zoning out at the speakers and just listening to that over and over.”

In his teens, Nutini immersed himself in American rock, R&B; and blues, in addition to continuing his love affair with soul. And at 16, instead of falling into the family business (the Castelvecchi, a popular fish ‘n’ chips shop in Paisley for more than 100 years), he moved to London to make a name in the music world.

“My first week in London I got my laptop stolen and I thought to myself, ‘This city is [crap],’ ” Nutini says, “but I met great people there who introduced me to the right people.”

The album’s title track is largely about the big city and how alien it initially seemed. “It’s a great place, but a very expensive place,” he adds. “My home is always going to be back in Paisley.”

His heart too. A good third of “These Streets” is about his first true love, Teri Brogan. The two split briefly when Nutini left for London, providing the inspiration for some of the record’s best songs, including the warm-ember burn of “Last Request” and the wistful “Rewind.”

Now back together, Nutini invited Brogan on his current tour.

The crooner will stop at nothing to win over Americans -- including a rotating cast of crowd-pleasing cover songs that includes Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me,” Bill Withers’ “Use Me,” Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and even Amy Winehouse’s current hit, “Rehab.”

“I just want people to leave a show and go, ‘That was the most rockin’ show I’ve ever seen,’ ” he says. “I hope people can just roll with me a little bit -- you know? ‘Cause I’m only 20 and this is a good start.”

weekend@latimes.com

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Paolo Nutini

Where: Avalon Hollywood, 1735 N. Vine St., Hollywood

When: 8 p.m. Friday

Price: $18 (sold out)

Info: (323) 467-4571