"I'M DONE IN FOR THIS YEAR." IT'S not the most encouraging admission Paolo Nutini could make mere hours before his first-ever Barrowland show and only a couple of weeks away from playing the high-profile Concert In The Gardens at Edinburgh's Hogmanay. Sure, he's one of the year's most successful new artists, but the Paisley teenager is exhausted - tired of touring, disillusioned by endless rounds of Smash Hits-style interviews, uncomfortable with the idea of being a pop pin-up and, most debilitating of all, missing home, with mobile phone-induced headaches to prove it.
There's a moment at the start of our chat, as he flicks distractedly through a copy of a music magazine, then listlessly tosses it aside, when it looks like he barely has the energy left to draw breath. "I'm just confused," he says. "Lack of sleep and the temptations the road brings you - it starts to play with your head a little bit.
" Then, suddenly, he's alert, sitting upright and cross-legged on his dressing room couch, earnestly spilling his feelings about the highs and lows of the last six months.
"I draw my inspiration from home, and when I'm away from it for too long, I lose it," he says candidly. "I go home and I'll go up to my room and I'll write a song without anything really happening, but if I try to do the same, say, in a hotel in Nottingham, it just doesn't come.
It's just Paisley, it's not as if it's Hawaii, but when you step foot in it, the best thing is that everyone's all there. I wish I was there to give them something back. You just want to give people the time they deserve, because I do not by any means prioritise selling records over anybody.
"
However, Nutini has sold records - half a million copies of his debut album These Streets in the UK alone since its summer release - meaning the demand to see him perform live will extend far into next year, fuelling further homesickness.
"It hits you harder sometimes than it does others," he admits. "Home is the essence of the whole record and if I want to go there then I don't see why anyone can stop me .
.. but you don't want to be petulant.
I'm the youngest in the whole group of us so it's very easy to be a little kid. Everybody else has got their heads so screwed on - the guys in the band, the managers, they all seem to know who they are, they know how they want to go about their life and I look at them in awe. I'm still just learning who I am and I'm so busy that it seems that learning who you are is put on the back burner.
That bemuses me because how the hell am I ever supposed to become the man I'm going to be?"
The personable Nutini is an intriguing character - an assured performer, a natural, though reluctant star and a remarkably good-looking young man who remains thoroughly grounded, yet riddled with insecurities. "I think this is wicked but I almost feel I've not worked for it as hard - I mean I have, I've gigged my ass off for the last four years and I've devoted all my time to music, but I've not had as many knocks and I think the knocks make the good times seem more amazing.
The boys in the band have worked all sorts of jobs - I just had a brief spell in the chippie [his family's fish and chip shop in Paisley] where I didn't work incredibly hard.
"SOMETIMES I FEEL THAT I'M BEING very ungrateful of what I've got," he muses, apologetically, "but it takes these moments, sitting down and talking to somebody or just lying on your bed looking at photos, to realise 'my God, this year..
.' "
This was the year when Paolo Nutini went from Paisley hopeful to platinum-selling Caledonia soul starlet. He shared a stage with Liza Minnelli at New York's Carnegie Hall, his debut single and album both soared into the Top Five, and he was swiftly promoted to a main stage slot at T in the Park.
He won the Spirit of Scotland Award for music and the Tartan Clef award for Best Newcomer, and he played a gig in the Tuscan opera house which his beloved grandfather used to frequent. Chic guitarist Nile Rogers asked him if he'd like to record a song originally written for Sister Sledge, and he will end the year in front of fans in Edinburgh, not to mention a worldwide TV audience of millions.
He brightens up considerably at the memory of one particular highlight, playing with a band of original Atlantic Records session musicians at the Montreux Jazz Festival, at the behest of legendary Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, who died last week.
Over the past year, Ertegun had become a mentor for Nutini who, in turn, was the last new discovery of the man who signed Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and Led Zeppelin.
"We're doing the soundcheck and the band are playing Last Request [his debut hit] with a bit of a swing, almost a reggaeish feel to it," recalls Nutini, with relish, "and Ahmet Ertegun is at the front of the stage saying 'buddy, it's a ballad, it's not a reggae song' and he goes to the sound desk and did our sound, he cared so much."
Speaking the day before Ertegun's death, Nutini was still hoping for another opportunity to thank his staunchest supporter in person.
"He was no bullshit, it was about the music and if the music stands strong then everything else will take care of itself, and it was so reassuring to hear that from somebody in such a position."
He also had the buzz of meeting his childhood hero Ben E King at Montreux. "Ben E King was great with me, making sure I got taken care of," he says.
"He was just so humble, he could not believe there was some Scottish kid that had grown up listening to his music - I was rhyming off every Drifters song.
"Les McCann [the respected jazz pianist] was drinking Heineken like it was water and every time he drinks one, I have to go for one as well. He's an old man in a wheelchair, but give him a microphone and it's effortless.
[Rediscovered soulman] Solomon Burke as well - he's got some crazy authority when he sits on his throne."
TO HIS DELIGHT, NUTINI FOUND himself on stage performing Ray Charles's What'd I Say with all three of these soul veterans. "Afterwards I was smoking a cigarette and Solomon Burke came up and said .
..hey Paolo - wanna kill what God gave you?
' and I just threw the cigarette away. And then Les McCann wheels up and says 'f*** it, man'."
It is clear that this was Nutini in his element, sitting at the feet of his heroes, drinking in their experience, advice (and alcohol).
He is often described as an old soul, thanks to his rhythm'n'blues rasp, old school influences and diffidence regarding pop celebrity. In conversation he is sincere, self-deprecating, philosophical and mature for his age (his professed enthusiasm for the daft film Tenacious D and the Pick Of Destiny is about the only reminder in our meeting that he is still a teenager, if not for much longer).
"I think my outlook on the music scene is a bit outdated now," he says.
"Loving music from the Fifties, Sixties and early Seventies, it just seems that everything's lost that little bit of charm and mystery and everybody's too easily accessible."
As the brightest new pop prospect of the year, Nutini has been burned already by press intrusion, particularly trumped-up tabloid tales about his fondness for the occasional recreational joint. Typically, he is primarily concerned about the effect of these stories on the folks at home.
"They just seem to be going to extraordinary lengths to make my mum and dad ashamed of me - why?" he wonders. "I don't think you can live your life with a view to making somebody proud of you, because you're probably going to fail.
"
The next day, prior to another homecoming gig, this one at Glasgow's Carling Academy (where he will also perform a record-breaking four-night sell-out run next spring), Nutini donates more of that precious time to an exclusive afternoon concert for the kids of Rachel House Children's Hospice. His mum Linda is in attendance too, leading the cheering, and patently not one bit ashamed of her singular son.
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