Bono ‘woke up in Abraham Lincoln’s bedroom’ after drinking cocktails with Barack Obama
‘He does tell people that he drinks me under the table,’ Bono said recalling the special visit
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Your support makes all the difference.Bono has recalled waking up in Abraham Lincoln’s former bedroom at the White House after he drank “strong cocktails” with the then-president of the United States, Barack Obama.
The U2 frontman had been visiting the Obama family with his wife, Alison Hewson, when Obama made the pair some drinks.
“He’s the most extraordinary man and they’re the most extraordinary family,” Bono said in a BBC Radio 2 interview with presenter Zoe Ball.
“The 44th president of the United States, he mixes cocktails; he doesn’t have too many, he’s very measured,”
Bono explained how he had an allergy to salicylates found in things like red wine, which causes his “head to swell up like a balloon” or prompts him to “fall asleep somewhere”.
Describing the “special moment” the couple were invited round, Bono explained how he had snuck off for a nap after drinking the cocktails and wine.
“I had them and the wine and the allergy and I ended up slipping out for a kip and the president said to Ali after about 10 minutes, ‘Where’s Bono gone?’
“She said, ‘He’s just gone for a sleep.’ [Obama] said, ‘I’m sorry?’,” the frontman recalled.
“She said, ‘He has to, he just has to go for these sleeps, he’ll be back in 10 minutes. I’ve been with him for 30 years, don’t you worry a thing about him, Mr President. I’ll go find him’.”
But Obama was insistent in coming with Hewson to find her husband, who they discovered asleep in Abraham Lincoln’s bedroom.
“He goes, ‘No, no, no.’ And he comes with her and (saying) where can he be…? I know, he was asking me about the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln’s’.
“And there I was in Lincoln’s bedroom, asleep, fallen asleep in the bosom of Abraham himself,” he continued. “He just woke me up and laughed. President laughed his head off.”
“But he does tell people that he drinks me under the table, he doesn’t believe the allergy thing,” Bono added. “He does make strong cocktails, though, just saying.”
The 62-year-old said that it wasn’t the first time he’d fallen asleep in a strange place: “I’ve fallen asleep in really awkward spots; the lighting desk of Sonic Youth – they mixed around me and couldn’t be nicer.
“I’ve slept on the street, on car bonnets and indeed I did fall asleep at the White House and they were very, very good about it actually.”
Bono’s memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story is out today (1 November).
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