And these children that you spit on

As they try to change their words

Are immune to your consolations

They're quite aware of what they're going thru

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

Don't tell them to grow up and out of it

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

Where's your shame

You've left us up to our necks in it

Glitter, however, was only one facet of Bowie's early work. The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust and Alladin Sane were concerned as much with mortality as with kinky sex. Bowie's lyrics reflected a fascination with aging and its immanence. On "Changes" he despairs that "Time may change me/but I can't trace time" and warns "rock'n'rollers" to turn and face the changes for ever they get older. And on "Cracked Actor" he paints a gruesome portrait of superannuated sex--"Forget that I'm fifty cause you just got paid/Suck, baby, suck, give me your head/Before you start professing that you're knocking me dead." But his evocation of transience and loss is even more vivid on "Five Years," a song that uses a cliched sci-fi formula--the sudden end of the world--to ingenious effect:

Pushing through the market square, so many mothers sighing

News had just come over, we had five year left to cry in

News guy wept when he told us earth was really dying

Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying

I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies