Billy Idol Show Trades on Punk Nostalgia

Nostalgia, it’s been said, ain’t what it used to be, an axiom that goes double regarding punk rock.

That didn’t stop first-generation British punker Billy Idol from sneeringly skipping down a razor wire-lined memory lane Wednesday during the first of his two nights at Anaheim’s House of Blues.

It’s been 24 years since Idol came growling out of England as the fist-thrusting leader of Generation X. Four years later, he became one of the only first-wave punks to gain mainstream success with a solo career at the dawn of MTV.

It’s also been eight years since his last studio album, “Cyberpunk,” which left him largely with the golden Idol oldies from a new greatest-hits collection to rely on for the 90-minute show.

His 1984 single “Rebel Yell” remains an exceptionally catchy anthem with attitude, however odd it is to watch longtime fans, now in their 30s and 40s, pumping their fists and bellowing along with the 45-year-old rocker to what was once a celebration of youthful independence and sexual abandon.

“Rebel Yell” appropriated the surface posturing of punk without really capturing its core values. Thus Idol now trades on nostalgia, where bona fide punk veterans such as Social Distortion continue to make music that burns with the passion of their youth as filtered through the experiences they’ve had reaching middle age.

The two new songs Idol introduced shared the repetitive pop hooks that characterized his hit “White Wedding” and such ballads as “Flesh for Fantasy” and “Eyes Without a Face,” the latter having far more in common with ‘80s Brit-pop acts such as Human League and A Flock of Seagulls than with the Sex Pistols or the Clash.

An album due out next year will test if Idol’s got anything substantive left up his tattered sleeve, or if he’s content to join his ‘80s peers retracing his steps along the hit parade.