From Uncut’s August 2016 issue (Take 231): a conspiratorial chat with JEFF BECK, in which the guitar maestro looks back on a lifetime reinventing rock music…

In a sunlit room on the top floor of a Bayswater mansion block, a laptop sits open on a table, a small wodge of Blu-Tack stuck over its camera. “A friend in the FBI told me to do that,” says Jeff Beck, and he’s not joking. One of rock’s most famous lone wolves, Beck rails at Newspeak, double-think and government surveillance. Everything Orwell predicted has come true, he maintains, “and like mugs we pay Apple to spy in our homes.” He hates the EU, the Obama administration and political correctness.

Beck turns 72 on June 24, but has the physical electricity of a much younger man. His classic posture is a tense slouch, one arm draped behind his head, fiddling with a handful of hair. He laughs often, but he eyes are challenging. Next to the laptop sits a bound copy of BECK01, a book of photographs illustrating his twin passions for guitars and cars. Alongside photos of hot rods he’s built over the years are pictures from his five-decade music career: with The Yardbirds, David Bowie, Jimmy Page, Ronnie Wood (a former Jeff Beck Group bassist) and Buddy Guy – one of his guitar heroes – with whom he’s touring America this summer.

Beck’s new album, Loud Hailer, is his first in six years. On the last one, Emotion & Commotion, he played “Nessun Dorma” with a 40-piece orchestra. Loud Hailer, however, is a squeal of brakes followed by a sharp left turn. Beck’s gone back to noise and aggression and singer, Rosie Bones, is prominent throughout. Her voice reminds him of Brenda Lee. Other might hear someone trying too hard to sing social commentary lyrics in a streetwise patois. But Beck likes her and that’s final.

The pages of his book open at a poster for The Girl Can’t Help It, a 1956 Jayne Mansfield film featuring Gene Vincent, Little Richard and Eddie Cochran. Beck saw it at the Granada Sutton when he was 12. “If ever a movie was life-changing,” he says. “I saw there in that beautiful old cinema and thought, ‘That’s what I’m gonna do.’”

This book isn’t an autobiography per se, is it?

Not yet. That’s the book we’re talking about doing next. I see a blockbuster movie at the end of it. A funny, tear-jerking tragic movie. It could unfold as a really heart-warming book in a way. The fights at school, they’ll be in there. The blossoming friendships, the awkwardness with girls. Having a great mum. She and her brother were my guiding forces when I was young. My dad couldn’t be bothered. He was wrapped up with cricket. From the minute he got in on Friday, it was cricket and that was it. He used to report for the local paper. He wanted me to play for Surrey.

Really? Would you have been a batsman or a bowler?

Batsman. I was a good bowler, but I just wanted to crack a six. I had a game with Jagger when we were rehearsing for the tour that wasn’t to be. [Beck pulled out of Jagger’s 1988 Australian tour at the last minute.] I said, “Mick, I haven’t played cricket for years.” Whack! I hit the ball so hard it went over a bus in a nearby road. We used to play tennis in Barbados. That album [Primitive Cool] must have been the most expensive to make ever. One minute we’re on an island off the coast of Florida, then we’re in New York or LA. I just thought, ‘Wow, what a waste of money.’

How would you describe your own new album?

It’s good. It’s not bad. It’s got some powerful stuff on it.

In 2014 you said it was going to sound like “a rabid Turkish bar band”. Now that it’s finished, would you stand by that comment?

Which album? This one was made last Christmas.

Maybe you were talking about a different album. Did you record one and scrap it?

Yeah, I shelved it. There was some unrest in the band, a lot of muso pushing and shoving, trying to turn it into a sort of esoteric fusion. I couldn’t get far enough away from that…

FIND THE FULL INTERVIEW FROM UNCUT AUGUST 2016/TAKE 231 IN THE ARCHIVE