BBC: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The British rock band Deep Purple met a long-time super fan in Tokyo on Friday – who just happened to be the Japanese prime minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You are my god,” Sanae Takaichi, a hard rock enthusiast, told the band’s drummer Ian Paice, beaming as she handed him a pair of signed Japanese-made drumsticks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An avid drummer herself, Takaichi played in a Deep Purple tribute band as a girl after becoming a fan in primary school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“These days, when I fight with my husband I drum to Burn and cast a curse on him,” the 65-year-old conservative leader told the musicians at her office in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The band met Japan’s first female prime minister as they returned to tour across the country where they recorded the 1972 live album Made in Japan – considered to be one of the greatest rock albums ever recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I can’t believe Deep Purple are here,” Takaichi said, smiling as she greeted the musicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I have the deepest respect for the way you continue to make rock history while embracing new challenges and creating captivating music to this day,” she said through an interpreter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The prime minister said she hoped the tour would “thrill and excite fans all over Japan” and promote cultural exchange between the UK and Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paice said it was always a pleasure to visit Japan, but called the meeting an “added bonus”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The band wrote in a post on Instagram: “A lifelong fan of hard rock and heavy metal, Takaichi has often named Deep Purple as one of her favourite bands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“She even told the group she bought their Machine Head album back in grade school.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Formed in England in 1968, Deep Purple became known as one of the “unholy trinity” of British heavy metal bands, alongside Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps their most renowned hit – Smoke on the Water – came on their 1971 album Machine Head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Takaichi played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band before picking up the drums while at university – after which she was known to carry several sets of drumsticks due to a tendency to break them during intense performances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The visit will have been a welcome respite for the prime minister, who has faced increasingly strained diplomatic ties with China, rising prices and a sluggish economy since coming to office in October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BBC: The British rock band Deep Purple met a long-time super fan in Tokyo on Friday – who just happened to be the Japanese prime minister. “You are my god,” Sanae Takaichi, a hard rock enthusiast, told the band’s drummer Ian Paice, beaming as she handed him a pair of signed Japanese-made drumsticks. An avid drummer herself, Takaichi played in a Deep Purple tribute band as a girl after becoming a fan in primary school. “These days, when I fight with my husband I drum to Burn and cast a curse on him,” the 65-year-old conservative leader told the musicians… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56445,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56444"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56446,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56444\/revisions\/56446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}