Def Leppard Spotty at Irvine Meadows

What, Def Leppard worry?

Why should it? After all, this is perhaps the heavy metal band of the ‘80s . . . the band that rejuvenated the whole stodgy metal scene . . . the band that has its album “Hysteria” entrenched at No. 2 in Billboard, with more than 5 million copies sold . . . a band that can get 15,000-fan sellouts pumping their fists for two nights at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre.

Well, if Def Leppard wants to be remembered in the ‘90s, it had better start worrying: Stiff challenges for metal supremacy are coming on the left from the speed-metalers led by Metallica, on the right from the pretty-boy melodeers spearheaded by Bon Jovi and in the middle from the cadre of street kids fronted by Guns N’ Roses. And Friday, in the first of the Irvine shows, the English quintet didn’t do anything to prove itself ready to hold off the challengers.

Don’t get the wrong idea: Def Leppard can thud, rock and rouse the kids with the best of them; Joe Elliot makes an amiable front man, and Rick Allen is certainly the best one-armed drummer since Moulty of the ‘60s garage band the Barbarians. But for all the nifty melodies of tunes like “Hysteria” and anthemic posturing of such numbers as “Rock of Ages,” there wasn’t an enduring classic--and hence a legacy for the band--to be found in the whole two-hour-plus show.

At least it doesn’t need to worry about Europe, the vapid Swedish five-piece that opened the show with a deadly dull set of simplistic rock and hair tossing. Ho-hum.