Diddley’s Still Waiting for His Piece of the Pie : Rock: The legendary singer-guitarist has had a huge influence on the industry, but, like many pioneers, he never saw the money he earned in those early days.

Bo Diddley has been chugging out his trademark beat for the last 34 of his 60 years, but don’t talk to him about retiring. “There are still things that need to be done, and I want to do them because I’m a citizen of the United States of America. And I classify myself as a damn good citizen.”

Though the things Diddley sees that need doing generally involve using his status as an entertainer to communicate to youth, participating in anti-drug projects and such, it may be no less an act of citizenship that Diddley is simply out there keeping his music alive. He performs at Knott’s Berry Farm today and Saturday.

The singer/guitarist pretty much wrote his own chapter of American rock history in the mid-’50s, originating the hypnotic “Bo Diddley” beat, which has influenced everybody from the Stones to Springsteen to the Smiths. Diddley-penned songs such as “I’m a Man,” “Who Do You Love,” “Mona,” “Hey Bo Diddley,” and “Roadrunner” were surging, musk-laden masterpieces and have lent themselves to numerous cover jobs, from the Grateful Dead to Chris Isaak. Eric Clapton’s earliest recordings with the Yardbirds included a Diddley tune, as does his just-released “Journeyman” album.

Diddley’s raw guitar work helped expand the instrument’s vocabulary with distortion, vibrato and other effects. And he practically defined the brash rock sense of style, dressing in loud plaids and jet-black cowboy outfits, riding tricked-out motor scooters and sporting squiggle-shaped, chrome-studded guitars such as his self-designed Thunderbird, which perhaps was inspired more by the wine than the car of the same name.

And in payment for his efforts, Bo basically got diddley squat.

Like many other seminal rock and R&B; performers, the vast majority of the monies earned through his talents and sweat went into the pockets of others. The matter is addressed by Texas’ the Snakes, with Diddley guesting, on their current single, “Pay Bo Diddley”:

Bo Diddley had him a rockin’ big time

But he never made a solitary dime . . .

Didn’t know he was doing anything wrong

Signing away every one of his songs.

Speaking from his home in rural Archer, Fla., Diddley said, “It’s a damn good song, not because it says, ‘Pay Bo Diddley,’ but because somebody thought enough of the situation that’s been going on with publishing companies and record companies not paying artists from the ‘50s. I was just the first one. I guess the next one should be ‘Pay the Coasters’ or ‘Pay the Shirelles,’ ‘Pay Carl Perkins’--all of us that got ripped off.

“I never saw any money, man. Maybe they can show you a check for $1,000 every here and there, something I’d get sent every now and then if my car broke down on the road. But they can’t show you anything where Bo Diddley cashed a check for $35,000 for royalties, or nothing like that.

“The position we were all in then, we had to trust some son-of-a-bitch, and we got ripped off. We worked hard, and a lot of people are living high off the hog off of our running up and down the road every night and records being sold, and we never seeing the money. Living in America, you have the opportunity to do something, but then you get slapped around with a pencil. What does a contract mean? Nothin’!”

Today when someone buys a $13 CD reissue of Diddley’s music, or the new Clapton album, Diddley said, “I don’t get a dime from it,” though he does claim that MCA, which has recently reissued his Chess label material, has “tried to clean up some of the bad vibes” left by previous owners of Diddley’s catalogue.

In the meantime, Diddley has a new album out on L.A.’s punk-oriented Triple-X Records titled “Breakin’ Through the B.S.” The album abounds with funk and rap influences, and Diddley’s trademark guitar is largely supplanted by synthesizers.

“You’ve got a new generation of kids out here, and you’ve got to change with the times,” he said. “I’m not totally out of touch with ‘Bo Diddley,’ say, but I made the album where there’s got to be something that every radio station can understand, something that will fit that format.”

He said he’s no stranger to rap. “That came out of the black neighborhood way back. We used to call it ‘signifying.’ ” Diddley was the first to make a hit of that early “dissing” style with his mid-’50s “Say Man,” where he and his maraca player Jerome Green traded choice insults. The new album’s socially concerned “Wake Up America” is a response to “all the garbage that’s going on. There’s too much conniving, too much backbiting with our officials. Look at the drug problem in our country--that comes under the heading of backbiting. All this conniving for the sake of a dollar bill. We’re killing our nation.

“You and I have to get out of the way someday and let the youngsters run the country, but we’re killing them. With the next generation of kids, what are we going to have, a junkie in the White House? What else is going to be left?”

For shows such as his Knott’s appearance, Diddley sticks to his classics, claiming, “As soon as people start asking for the new ones, I’ll play them.”

While he makes a comfortable living--”meaning I’m not starving”--he wouldn’t mind getting some of the all-star attention accorded to contemporaries such as Chuck Berry and the late Roy Orbison in film and record projects in the last couple of years.

“I feel like I have been ignored to the fullest. The Nike commercial I recently did with Bo Jackson has done more for my career than what has been done for me in the music industry in the last 15 years. But that’s all water under the bridge.

“I might sound it, but I’m not bitter about it. I feel blessed to have had the life I’ve had. It’s only that I just want some of the cake. If I’m the sucker that’s going to put it together--and my Bo Diddley sound is being used everywhere--then give me a slice of it.”

Bo Diddley and the Coasters play today at Saturday at 4 and 7 p.m. at Knott’s Berry Farm, 8039 Beach Blvd., Buena Park. Admission: $15.95 to $19.95, includes all park attractions. Information: (714) 220-5200.