A Thing of the Past

For the past 13 years, Lenny Kravitz has striven to maintain the core values of classic rock for an audience that longs to keep the Promethean flame of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s alive. His 1989 debut album, “Let Love Rule,” paid gentle homage to his rock heroes without overtly aping them, but over time the once-promising musician has turned into a fake nostalgia act. He’s an artist trapped in his own frayed jeans and Foster Grants persona, recycling the same heavy rock riffage and love themes so that the song always remains the same.

Kravitz’s performance at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater on Tuesday roamed through the L.A. native’s long career, but as usual it was all strictly 1973. This has always been Kravitz’s shtick, and he’s cultivated it as artfully as Madonna has cultivated her career, with careful fashion choices girding the musical presentation.

In fact, the stage looked like 1973, with a long wall of Vox amplifiers in back and three musicians who seemed to have been set-designed by Kravitz. Guitarist Craig Ross sported a mile-high Afro and a denim jacket emblazoned with an American flag, while bassist Jack Daley’s stringy hair and leather jacket were very MC5-chic.

Opening with the dunderhead anthem “Rock and Roll Is King,” the singer-guitarist, resplendent in bell-bottoms, entreated the crowd to bask in this bit of self-evident boosterism, and it worked. A nearly sold-out audience, many of them old enough to trace Kravitz’s ersatz songs back to their original sources, greeted him like the authentic rock god he longs to be.

Most of Kravitz’s most popular songs are constructed around big, hulking guitar figures that telegraph the heaviosity to come, and this show featured virtually all of these monster-truck hooks. “Fly Away,” “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” and Kravitz’s wan version of the Guess Who’s “American Woman” all provided riff succor for this crowd.

Kravitz’s ballads were more satisfying. The grainy images of ‘60s protests that played on a screen during “Let Love Rule” turned that otherwise tender acoustic song into a trite flower-power flashback, but it remains one of his most heartfelt compositions.

“Stillness of Heart,” like many of Kravitz’s previous soul ballads, is a conflation of some inchoate spiritual longing with romantic love, and it seemed to bring out something genuine in the singer Tuesday. A small piece of the facade cracked, allowing a little genuine feeling to slip through. It was a reminder that Kravitz is too talented to keep himself trapped in an “Almost Famous” universe. Perhaps one day, when the bell-bottoms fade, he can start writing in the present tense.

Opener Pink’s invigorating set wisely played to the Kravitz crowd. Backed by a five-member band, the singer tossed in a Janis Joplin medley among songs from her multi-platinum album “Miss- undaztood.” Strong of voice and armed with a clutch of smart dance songs, Pink had no trouble getting across to a crowd that would rather listen to Pink Floyd.