The first album for six years by GARY CHAPMAN has been acknowledged by numerous critics as one of the finest albums of the year. Jan Willem Vink reports.

Chapman further describes the content of the song. "In this song, there is an old rundown bridge. The townspeople should have destroyed or repaired it years ago, but they didn't. A mother and her son are on the bridge the day it collapses. An old may fishing under the bridge sees the son and the mother fall in the river and dives in to help. He finds them but can't save them both. The mother hands him the son and she dies. He takes the boy and swims to the edge. Just as he gets to the shore, he dies from exertion. Later, thinking about the song, its powerful imagery struck me: the river is death -the inevitable end of human life as we know it. You can't get around it. You have to go through it. That's incredible imagery I did not intend to put there; it simply came out as I wrote the song."

Gary's wife described the effect "Sweet Jesus" had on her. "He was maybe one verse into it and I had this conscious thought, 'I can either listen to this and hold it together, or I can just kind of let the song roll over me and do what it will.' It's the end of the day, I'm sitting with my back toward the keyboard with my shoulder against his shoulder but facing the other way. By the time he was on the second verse, my chest was wet with tears. I just thought, 'Oh, I love this man. I love that his creative bent can do something to move me in such a powerful way.'"

Gary Chapman is a man who enjoys life to the fullest. He goes bungy jumping with his wife, rides a Harley Davidson, is a pilot and a racecar driver and has landed in bad weather a simulated 747. "My biggest frustration? I realise that I'm blessed and that I've had a great, great life," says Chapman. "There's too much to do. I almost wish I could do it all over again just to cram more living in.

"I just want to live my life and point people towards Christ. I think there are a lot of things that I will wind up saying. I don't want to have a set thing that I plan to say. I just try to be honest and hear God. If he wants me to say something, I'll do it. If not I'm going to perform my music as well as I can and try to be real."