`He has a tendency to be not that interesting'

`Get over here now," says the mildly panicky message on the mobile. "We're running ahead of schedule." I get over there, pronto. But the imposing mahogany door stays implacably closed: somebody else got there faster. There follows a good deal of pacing about in the corridor, sipping of still water and making of small-talk with assorted amiable minders. So this is what it's like to interview a worldfamous rock star. When you get right down to it, it's like a visit to the dentist - the big, dark door, the uneasy feeling in the pit of the stomach, the eerie silence which might, at any moment, be shattered by an outbreak of rat-a-tat drilling sounds (in this case, a blast from the latest greatest hits album).

When, finally, the door opens and The Irish Times is ushered in, Bryan Adams is sitting with his back to one of the Merrion Hotel's well-appointed windows. Contrary to the wispily blonde impression given by the cover of the aforementioned great hits album, he doesn't look in the least like David Beckham. He doesn't look like the little-boy-lost he sometimes sounds like, either. He has a short, tough haircut and a wary expression: in fact he looks not like a rock star about to hold court, but like an unusually well-dressed hostage.

It quickly becomes apparent why the interviews are running ahead of schedule. "Tell me about growing up in Vancouver." "I didn't grow up in Vancouver. I grew up around the world. My parents were diplomats." A pause. Perhaps he'll elaborate? He doesn't. We persevere with Canada for a bit. "Have you ever played in the Canadian Arctic?" "The highest I've been is Fort McMurray, which is as north as you can get in Alberta before you hit North-West Territories." The voice is quiet to the point of inaudible. "And were there enough people to play to, up there?" "Oh, yes, there were plenty of people: but most of 'em were drunk."

Approximately a minute and a half has passed, and we've already despatched Canada - all 10 million square kilometres of it. And that was supposed to be the introductory small talk: at this rate, I'll be back outside that mahogany door faster than you can say "16 million best-selling albums". Let's take a shot at musical origins. "I guess I started in the 1970s." Musical influences? "AC/DC came out: I liked AC/DC". Starting-points? "It depends what year you wanna talk about - 1970s? 1980s? 1990s? What?" Well, there goes another minute and a half. It's like a visit to the dentist, all right - except I'm the one pulling the damn teeth. How about piano lessons? Wasn't there something in the press release about piano lessons?

"I bought a piano for myself and learned how to play it. Taught myself. Just sat down and played for hours - anything that was piano-based, I'd just listen to it and try to figure it out. Most of the time I'd just try to work the chords out." And did he teach himself to read music, too? "No. I don't read music. I did a studio session once. There were four singers. The pianist gave everybody the sheet music, and I just stood there. I was 16. And he went, `OK', and everybody else started singing and doing their part and I was, sort of [he mimes a statue frozen in an attitude of horror]. But I read the notes and figured out where I should fit in, and sort of followed. Occasionally the pianist would say, `no, just sing in that register there - duh, duh, duh'. And I always figure that's how I started, really. I've got a good ear for music. I can harmonise, no problem."

By Adams's standards, that was a veritable symphony of words. He rarely gives interviews and often, when he does, he might as well not bother. The length of the average Adams aphorism is 20 words or less. Despairing hacks are driven to write about his house, his hobbies - his music, even, sometimes. And we Dubliners are lucky, for the man the Ottawa Citizen dubbed "the notoriously media-shy rocker" has taken to doing the majority of his interviews by e-mail. A brainwave, according to a spokeswoman for his management company in Vancouver, Kim Blake: "As an artist he doesn't really enjoy being interviewed. Because he enters these situations not really into them, he has a tendency to be not that interesting, so when he has a chance to relax and think about the questions and think about his answers, I find I've never seen him more animated and more interesting." The hacks, unimpressed, wonder how they can be sure it's really Adams out there in cyberspace at all.

Of course, you could say his record as a rocker speaks for itself. He began as a singer in a glam-rock band called Sweeney Todd; by the end of the 1970s he had a solo recorddeal with A&M; in 1984 he topped the US album charts with Reckless. The rest is rock history, and let's face it, we all know the soundtrack: Summer of '69; All For Love; Run To You; The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me (Is You); When You're Gone. Nothing much to be said about any of those, except that they sold in scary quantities in all sorts of unlikely places, and kept the flickering flame of stadium rock alive long past the point where, by rights, it should have been dead and buried. But if you thought that was all there is to Bryan Adams, you'd be wrong.

He is, for example, a pretty able photographer. Besides the artwork for several of his own album covers, he has produced a couple of books, Made in Canada and Haven. Portraits of well-known women from Canada and Britain respectively, these were not only commercially successful, raising considerable quantities of money for breast-cancer charities (the British volume, sold via mail order and the Jigsaw chain of clothing stores, sold out) but also, oddly enough, garnered Adams the sort of critical praise that has always eluded his music. So maybe he'll be happy to talk about his photography. It was a chance to show another facet of himself, wasn't it? He nods yes, gives a slight shrug which, if he wasn't a world-famous rock star, you might be tempted to describe as "shy". "For me it was a very experimental thing." And . . . ? End of subject.

Well, then, what about his work for animal rights and the environment, the concerts for Greenpeace, his involvement with the Silent Oceans Project, an American foundation that aims to stop pollution beneath the sea? He looks askance. "What about it?" the look says. Well, for instance, how does it sit with the unashamedly commercial concerns of the music business? "It's nothing to do with the business. What I believe in has nothing to do with the music business." So he keeps that part of him quite separate from the stadium-rock persona, then? "I don't thump the table about animal rights like Chrissie Hynde does. But I don't eat 'em, either." We persevere with the green angle, and for the first time, at the mention of his role in the establishment of a whale sanctuary in the southern ocean, he becomes almost animated. He still, however, doesn't elaborate.

At heart, it seems, Bryan Adams is just a stay-at-home, save-the-whale kinda guy. But doesn't 20 years of having thousands of people beam adulation at you from the playing surfaces of gigantic stadiums, well, change a fellow? "To be honest, I don't really care about fame," he says, with the kind of firmness that may just come from sincere conviction. "I'm not really interested in it at all, and I was very unhappy when it first started. It was odd, you know? My manager was thrilled, we were breaking into the big time, and I wasn't sure. I can cope with it easily now. But no one knows how to cope with being famous. I see it all the time. I see bands getting big and then breaking up and floundering because there's no school you can go to. Somebody told me today that Van Morrison once founded a group called Fame Anonymous . . ."

If you want to remain anonymous, it's probably not a good idea to write songs that turn into instantly recognisable international anthems. He spreads his hands in a gesture that could be helplessness or resignation. "The songs are written with an audience in mind, and part of that is that the audience responds to them. So they have a participatory element, sure . . ." But then again, even his love songs tend to turn into instantly recognisable international anthems. What did he think when Everything I Do (I Do It For You) broke all the record records by spending 16 weeks at the top of the UK charts? "I just thought it was really funny. It was just a simple love song really. I'm not interested in anything except making music - creating something out of nothing." Like creating Dracula, maybe?

Oh, God. I've said it aloud, and now he's looking askance again. The Irish Times hastens to explain to the world-famous rock star that it didn't mean to insult his record-breaking song by comparing it to a bloodsucking monster. It's just that idea, of creating something out of nothing, something which takes on a life of its own, refuses to die. But Bryan Adams isn't looking askance any more. He's actually smiling. Smiling. "Love and lust," the oh-so-quiet voice says. "Both of them are monstrous. Don't you think?" Time for the interviewer to be struck totally, irredeemably dumb.

Bryan Adams plays Slane Castle on Saturday, August 26th, with Moby, Macy Gray, Melanie C, Eagle Eye Cherry, Muse and Dara