The year was 1980. The girl was Ingrid Schorr. And the song was from Reckoning, although it was later compiled into the greatest-hits CD Eponymous. She dated Mike Mills, the bass player in the newly-formed R.E.M., and he turned to her and said he liked her, and that she couldn't go back to Rockville, MD, her hometown and her place her parents had just recalled her for the summer, vaguely aware of the wanton debauchery in her life.
R.E.M. wrote the song Don't Go Back To Rockville in her honor, the song not about the girl but about her departure. Oddly enough, the song has engendered stereotypical portrayals of the actual town of Rockville, the lyric "You'll wind up in some factory" being entirely erroneous; Rockville is another suburban locale, not a shady wrong side of the tracks Skid Row with no chance to survive. The song is merely an impassioned request for Ingrid to remain in Athens for the summer -- no other sketchy doings are implied. | 
