Guitar Legend : Dick Dale, inventor of California surfin’ music, performs Saturday night at the Ventura Theatre.

About 30 years ago the beach was very different than it is now. There was plenty of room to park--for free, too. No broken glass. Camping, bonfires and fun in general were not illegal. Even the lifeguards were cool.

Also about 30 years ago Dick Dale, a left-handed guitarist who lived in Orange County, invented the soundtrack to this idyllic Southern California lifestyle--surf music. Before the Beach Boys, before everybody--Dale was “the king of the surf guitar.”

And Dale, like everybody else who has come back, never really went away. He’s been playing all these years with his band the Del-Tones and will perform at the Ventura Theatre on Saturday night.

In 1962, on then-heavyweight KRLA-AM, Dale had four songs in the Top 5, “Miserlou,” “Let’s Go Trippin,” “Peppermint Man” and “Surf Beat.” Not even the Beatles did that. He regularly sold out the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, which held several thousand surfers, gremmies, hodads and their assorted California blond beach bunnies--all doing the surfer stomp.

Dale’s rapid-fire staccato delivery influenced countless other surf instrumental bands, not to mention the Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix and all the heavy-metal thrashers.

Dale moved to California as a teen-ager for his final year of high school and graduated from Washington High in Inglewood in 1954. He moved to Orange County, picked up a guitar, and the rest is history. Once an avid surfer, Dale now lives far from the beach in the high desert near Twentynine Palms on his ranch of more than 80 acres, Sky Ranch. During a recent phone interview, Dale, never one to be stuck for an answer, had a lot to say.

Where did surf music come from?

Back in 1957-58, I created surf music. Contrary to what others may say, no other human alive created that sound. Surfing music is a sound that is copied from the power you get by surfing in the ocean. It’s a machine-gun staccato sound that doesn’t break rhythm. Surf music is actually just the sound of the waves played on a guitar, that wet, splashy sound.

Your concerts at the old Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa were legend.

For the first two-and-a-half, three years, we didn’t have the money to make records. I started playing at the Rinky Dink Ice Cream Parlor in Balboa, then later at the Rendezvous Ballroom. The ice cream place is an Orange Julius now and the Rendezvous burned down and was rebuilt as some expensive apartments.

How did you create your unique sound?

At that time, I was experimenting with Leo Fender and his guitar amps. I blew up 48 of his amps before we finally got it right. Sometimes it sounded good in the factory, but later at the show, the bodies of 4,000 kids were soaking up the sound. After going through all those amps, Leo said, “If it can withstand Dick Dale, then it’s ready for human consumption.”

We kept making the speakers bigger and bigger. But I’d keep blowing them up anyway--literally catching them on fire. The amps that survived became the Showman amps. Surf music is played through a Showman amp with a Stratocaster guitar. We created the Fender reverb at approximately the same time as the Showman amp, sort of as frosting on the cake.

Jimi Hendrix used to come to your shows?

Oh yeah, back in those days, the Beach Boys and Jimi Hendrix used to come to see me play. Hendrix was the bass player for Little Richard. We were both left-handed, but we would use a right-handed guitar held upside down and backwards. He developed my slides and my riffs. In fact he used to say, and this is documented, “I patterned my style after Dick Dale.”

You don’t miss the beach anymore?

Oh, no, we live in the high desert now, 2,000 feet up. My wife and I really love it out here--there’s no traffic, and real air. I don’t think I could handle the beaches anymore--it’s too crowded. I used to surf up in Ventura County at Silver Strand, plus I’ve played up there many times. Tell the people to come on out--we’re going to knock the walls down. . . .