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She studied classical piano, but quickly gravitated to the mid-'70s glam scene, hanging out with bands like the New York Dolls at Rodney Bingenheimer's club in Los Angeles. People magazine ran a photo of her at age 16, at the release party for David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel." When the Ramones played the Savoy shows in North Beach, Jennifer was right there in the audience, along with a cluster of hipsters who would later form the bands Crime, The Nuns, and The Avengers.

People remembered her as aloof and withdrawn, sitting backstage by herself, reading a book before a show. I began to realize that more than anything else, she was just an insecure rich-girl teenager who craved the spotlight and wasn't prepared to handle the attention.

"I was really snooty. But I really wasn't that confident in those days. I had all these guys coming on to me because I was really young and I was unattached. It was kind of weird. There were all these rock stars wanting to date me and all these people, so I just kind of closed off."

I asked what it might have been like as a female in such a male-dominated scene. Did she form bonds with other girls?

"No, they all hated me," she replied. "Penelope [Houston, from The Avengers] and I sort of knew each other, but we never really bonded because I was so different from those girls. They were all kind of rough, tough sleazy street girls, and I was elegant, and wearing black evening gowns and perfect makeup and they all hated me, because I was this posh lady. But you know, people in bands all hate each other. Bands hate other bands. Even to this day, I'm not that big and I'm not that famous, but I still have a lot of problems, especially since I'm still dating people in show business, and bands and clubs. So I still get that kind of competitive jealousy, even on the smallest level."

The Nuns imploded for the usual reasons -- cocaine and heroin and booze, strong competing personalities, a music industry that didn't want to take the risk. According to Jennifer, it didn't help that the band was managed by drug dealers.

"The whole thing, it's like a building with a decaying foundation -- when the foundation of your building is made of drugs, you know. What's gonna happen? Gee, I wonder!" She laughed out loud, and a few old ladies looked up from a nearby table.

"So obviously the whole thing sort of deteriorated. Alejandro formed his other band Rank and File, and then we went back to New York and I tried to plead with the drug dealer managers, I said, 'Well what are we gonna do? Since everyone's doing drugs, don't you think maybe we should try and pull this thing together and get straight?" And they go, 'Well, why don't you quit?' That's what they said to me, that was their solution. Apparently they had some tax evasion problems, so they ended up in South America, and they're still there. It was a bit of a money laundering thing, oh yes."

The Nuns' songs were eventually recorded on an album, and versions of the band continued intermittently throughout the years. But even though she was now the group's most recognizable face, she seemed less inclined to talk about that history. I asked her how the other members of the original Nuns viewed the direction she took.

"They all kind of sneer at The Nuns," she said. "They look at The Nuns as a joke. To me The Nuns were really a cool band. We never sold out, we never made it big, we never became a big commercial thing. But so what? A lot of people don't make it in showbiz. I've been basically in and around showbiz people since then, and none of them make it either, so it's not just us. Showbiz is very, very cutthroat, very competitive. The weird thing is, I keep thinking it's going to end. But I'm still doing The Nuns. I'm still doing it."

I asked her what she took away from the whole experience, and she burst out laughing. "Don't ever, ever get into a band! Do something else with your life. Be a lawyer, be a waitress -- anything. I would have been much better off if I had just gone to Vassar and married some investment banker."

As noted in her obituaries, including the one here on All Shook Down, Jennifer passed away with no family or friends around her, other than a neighbor who doubled as caregiver. She left an apartment filled with Nuns photos, flyers, and recordings. But rather than remember her as clinging to her clippings like a punk-rock Norma Desmond, we can also watch archival clips that reveal her, and The Nuns, in their prime.

On January 14, 1978, at the Winterland in San Francisco, what would be the final show ever for the Sex Pistols, the most talked-about punk show in history, before the mob of 5,000 roared to life and pelted the stage with spit and D-sized batteries, before anyone knew what to expect, before rock media anointed this night as the death of punk rock, before the voiceover introduction, "We're The Nuns, and we ain't from New York, and we ain't from England, we're from San Francisco!", the very first person to take the stage was Jennifer, walking out by herself in a single spotlight, scared to death and emotionally fragile from just having broken up with Crime drummer Brittley Black. She sat at her piano, began a closing-time saloon melody, leaned into the mic and sang, "I'm so lazy, so lazy...I'm too lazy to fall in love...It's such a bother, I'd much rather stay home and watch TV..."

Jennifer remembered the moment clearly. "After that," she said, "you can't go back to a normal life."

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See also:

Jack Boulware is the co-author, with Silke Tudor, of Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day.

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