Trivia / Document

• Based on a Dream: "It's The End of the World As We Know It" was based on a dream Michael Stipe had where he was at a party where everyone except him had the initials L.B. Those people were composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein, former Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev, comedian Lenny Bruce and rock critic Lester Bangs.
• Breakthrough Hit: The album was the band's first to make the Top 10 on the Billboard chart. "The One I Love" was also their first single to make the Top 10, cementing their arrival as a mainstream rock band and laying the groundwork for their break into superstardom in 1991.
• Development Hell: "King of Birds" actually dates back to the sessions for Fables of the Reconstruction. Rudimentary versions, including a "ten-minute-long psychedelic version", were recorded as demos for that album and for Lifes Rich Pageant^note which actually features its demo version on its 25th anniversary re-release, where it was titled "March Song" before finally appearing here.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: In addition to the Based on a Dream elements above, "It's the End of the World as We Know It" was also partially inspired by an actual birthday party the band attended around 1980, featuring cheesecake, jelly beans, and a drunken Lester Bangs (who reportedly referred to Peter Buck as a "rotten cocksucker").
• Refitted for Sequel: "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" originated during the Lifes Rich Pageant sessions as "PSA", which only reached the demo recording stage before being excluded from that album. For the Document sessions, it was given a new set of lyrics and a slightly modified melody, turning it into the memorably unmemorizable song we know today. The original version of "PSA" would later be re-recorded and released as a single in 2003 to promote the Greatest Hits Album In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003, under the new title "Bad Day".
• What Could Have Been:
  • R.E.M. originally wanted to rehire Lifes Rich Pageant producer Don Gehman to work on Document, only for Gehman to be unavailable; he did, however, recommend Scott Litt, who ended up producing the band's material for the next decade.
  • The line "hang your freedom higher" in "Welcome to the Occupation" was originally written as "hang your freedom fighters," a Double Entendre that can be read as either "hang" as in "lynch" or "hang" as in "hang [a picture] up on the wall." However, Bill Berry requested that the line be changed due to potential Unfortunate Implications.
  • In a 1987 interview with Rolling Stone, Peter Buck claimed that the Fairlight CMI was played on a number of tracks throughout the album, only for most of these parts to be erased. However, one can still hear synth strings in "Oddfellows Local 151", and there's still a credit for session musician Carl Marsh playing the Fairlight on "Fireplace", though it's impossible to detect on the latter^note whether or not this is an effect of the device's sample-based nature or just the result of the credit being there in error has never been clarified, in part because nobody's ever explained what the Fairlight was used for on "Fireplace".
• Working Title:
  • "Firehouse" for "Oddfellows Local 151".
  • Among the album titles the band considered were Mr. Evil Breakfast, Skin Up With R.E.M. and Last Train to Disneyland, the last one suggested by Peter Buck as a rip on how to him America under Ronald Reagan was beginning to resemble the theme park. Two other titles that at least made it onto the packaging were R.E.M. No. 5, which appears on the cover next to the actual title, and Table of Content, which appears as the header for the tracklist on the back cover.