“All you have to do is turn on the TV and you’re inundated by complete lies from people who are supposed to be running this country”: How distortion, chaos and a world gone mad shaped R.E.M.’s game-changing album Document album

REM posing for a photograph in 1987.

Released in 1989, R.E.M.’s Document was a watershed album, not only for the band but also for so-called ‘alternative rock’. Blame later incarnations of the band for subsequent offences committed by Coldplay and Keane, if you must, but if you do you also have to acknowledge the part REM played in shaping the likes of Nirvana and Radiohead.

Over the first few years of their recording life, R.E.M. developed an instantly recognisable, highly idiosyncratic musical style based on, in guitarist Peter Buck’s words, “this weird, post-folk, long melody line type-thing”. Drummer Bill Berry booted it along, Mike Mills supplied melodic, propulsive bass, and both added sugar-coated backing vocals, while Buck wrung a post-Byrdsian jangle from his Rickenbacker guitar, and Michael Stipe made up nonsense lyrics, and murmured them while clinging to the mic for dear life.