Remembering Michael 'Bam-Bam' Sversvold of JFA, a 'superstar' of Phoenix punk, dead at 57

Michael "Bam-Bam" Sversvold was a legendary presence on the Phoenix underground, having powered his way into the spotlight as the hyperactive force of nature attacking his drums at age 14 with the reckless abandon of a young Keith Moon for skate-rock-icons-in-the-making JFA, who hit the scene in 1981.

Sversvold drew his final breath on May 11, 2024, after struggling with a long-term autoimmune disease. He was 57.

To JFA vocalist Brian Brannon, Sversvold was “right up there” with the greatest drummers in the history of punk.

“Bam-Bam held it down and took it above and beyond where anybody else would even think of going,” Brannon says.

“Bam's approach was just all-out but with a sense of style and flair that was beyond up-tempo. He was made to play punk rock. I don't think JFA would've been what it was without Bam pushing us. We were the fastest band in the land back then.”

Michael 'Bam-Bam' Sversvold was the perfect fit for JFA from Day 1

Michael Cornelius was JFA’s bassist. He knew Sversvold was the perfect fit the day he showed up to audition. By that point in 1981, Cornelius, who was 21, and guitarist Don Redondo, who was 20, had tried out several drummers closer to their own age but nothing was clicking.

“When Bam came in, he had that overactive wiry energy that made it all work,” Cornelius says. “And he was really good from the get-go. It wasn't like he was a beginner drummer at 14. He could play the (expletive) out of the drums at 14.”

It didn't hurt that Sversvold "understood what we were trying to do," Cornelius says, "and had the energy and craziness to do it.”

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The idea was to come up with a new sound made for blasting on a boombox at High Roller Skatepark or some hapless neighbor’s empty pool while skateboarding.

“There was a convergence at that time of skateboarding and punk rock,” Cornelius recalls. “We're skateboarders. We like punk rock. Why would we start a punk band that's anything else but by skateboarders for skateboarders?”

Taking a name that’s short for Jodie Foster’s Army within weeks of a failed assassination attempt on then-President Ronald Reagan by a fan obsessed with Foster’s work in “Taxi Driver,” JFA were ahead of the curve on skate-rock.

Redondo recalls Tony Victor, who ended up releasing seven records for them in the ‘80s on the Phoenix-based Placebo Records imprint, trying to talk them out of putting so much focus on the skating.

“As far as he knew, skateboarding was dead,” Redondo says.

“And he's looking at me like, 'Well, you're already punk rock. That's strike one. You sure you want to make skateboarding strike two?' I'm like, ‘You don't get it. This goes with how people skateboard today. It's not dreamy cruising down hills to Pink Floyd anymore. It's in-your-face, big-guitar thrash music.’”

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With Bam-Bam, JFA had 'a Keith Moon guy who plays the whole set'

JFA auditioned Sversvold after a group of his friends approached Redondo at a punk show.

“I guess word got out at the skatepark that me and Mike were putting together a skate-rock band,” Redondo says.

“I said, 'Look, dude, I'm not into regular punk — snare, hi-hat, oon-ta, oon-ta, oon-ta, crash. I'm more into The Who. And I've already got the best bass player in Arizona. What I'm looking for in a drummer is somebody who can play like the Circle Jerks' 'Red Tape.' A Keith Moon guy who plays the whole set.'”

Sversvold did all that and more.

“He made up really weird rhythms that when I show them to my current drummer — we're on drummer No. 18 — he's like, 'Oh, my God, I can't believe a teenager came up with that,’” Redondo says.

“He brought unpredictable, all-over-the-drum-set beats that no other band had. Everybody else plays punk rock pretty straight. They just play it fast. Bam played it Keith Moon and fast.”

He also played with power and precision.

“He could maintain the drive of the song even though we were playing at outrageous speeds, as fast as my little wrists could go,” Cornelius says. “He was a super badass drummer. And he’s spoiled me for drummers ever since. From that time on, I can't really hang with a drummer who's not a badass.”

Bam-Bam quickly emerged as 'one of the premier drummers in punk'

Redondo recalls a favorite memory from an early tour.

He was making his way to the front of the venue after soundcheck when he noticed the dumbfounded look on the sound engineer who’d just cued up a Rush song on the PA.

“I looked back to see what he was looking at,” he says.

“And there's Bam-Bam on a five-piece set playing 'Tom Sawyer.' And he's not just playing it, he's killing it. On one-eighth of the drums Neil Peart had. Just killing it. Plus, he looks like Animal from the Muppets. Truly, the guy could play anything.”

Victor was always impressed with Sversvold's playing.

“Bam-Bam was very accomplished at a very, very young age and he just got better,” Victor says. “By the time he was 19, he’d toured the country three times and, in my opinion, was one of the premier drummers in punk.”

Bam-Bam was a sweet kid who could be a challenge on a tour bus

He was also a really sweet, generous person, Victor says.

“He had substance abuse and alcohol problems and that skews everything, but he was really a good... You know, it's funny, because I was about to say he was a good kid. And I was only five years older than him.”

It was Victor’s job to keep things running smoothly on the road, which often meant leaning on Sversvold, who left school at 15 to tour with his mother's blessing — “just to keep him rolling from one town to another without going, 'Well, we should stay at this party.’ 'Well, if we do that, we won't get to Virginia Beach tomorrow.’”

As Victor says, they were "road warriors," traveling the country for weeks on end in a school bus with no A/C.

“Sometimes, Bam could be a little challenging,” Redondo says. “He'd be like, 'Well, we're either getting pizza or I'm not playing.’ But on the bus, he was always hilarious. Like a comedy show.”

Bam-Bam was quick with an off-the-wall joke and loved to hold court

Brannon was a big fan of the drummer’s “crazy” sense of humor.

“He would come up with some totally off-the-wall stuff,” he recalls.

“Me and him were the youngest members of the band. We both joined when we were 14. So we were tight. But I think everybody who really knew Bam loved him. I don't think you could help but do that. There won't be anybody else like him. And that's a real shame.”

Tom Reardon, a music journalist and longtime fixture on the local scene who had the opportunity to play with Sversvold on more than one occasion, says the drummer was quick with a joke, no matter how much he’d been drinking.

“He was hilarious,” Reardon says. “And he could drink and drink and tell coherent stories. He had a great memory. And he loved holding court. Find somebody willing to listen and off the races he went.”

Bam-Bam was an excellent skater, which means a lot in skate-rock

Sversvold was also an excellent skater, which meant a lot in JFA.

“We played skate rock, which meant we skated first and foremost, and then we played music,” Brannon says.

They would often skip soundcheck on tour to go skating.

“We would go out with the locals and they’d take us to the local ramp or ditch or pool, whatever,” Brannon says. “And we would just skate and have fun, then come back to play the show and knock it out.”

Sversvold parted ways with JFA after beating the hell out of his drum kit on a string of classic records on Placebo, from the “Blatant Localism” EP to “Valley of the Yakes,” a self-titled album and the “Mad Garden E.P.,” rejoining just in time to play on “Nowhere Blossoms,” JFA's final release on Placebo.

Then, he quit a second time.

Bam-Bam quit JFA to find a band more interested in making it

By that point, JFA had done as much as anyone to pioneer the skate-rock genre (also known as skate-punk).

“I think certainly 'Blatant Localism,' that 1981 EP, changed rock 'n' roll in its own little way, because it started a skate-rock revolution,” Victor says. “And JFA, they were right at the forefront of that.”

Sversvold left because the other guys in JFA weren’t serious enough about succeeding.

“The three of us never saw music as a way to pay the rent,” Redondo says. “It was something fun to do, to hang out with your friends, where Bam looked at the world — and rightly so — like he was good enough, he could've been a musician.

"I always joke with my wife that you could go to Guitar Center and find a better guitar player than me. But in his heyday, you could not find a better drummer than Bam.”

Redondo says that's why he never begrudged the drummer joining other bands.

“I knew I was just doing it kind of like Jodie Foster's National Guard, one week a year and one weekend a month. And I honestly wanted the kid to make it. He was that good. I just wish some famous band had picked him up.”

A lot of people assumed some giant rock stars would swoop in and make Sversvold an offer he couldn't refuse.

“That was always the thinking,” Reardon says. “He's gonna be a superstar. The big rock 'n' roll hero. I definitely remember hearing that Guns N' Roses was looking at Bam. Now, I don't know if that was true or not, but....”

By the time he got to Rabid Rabbit, Cornelius says, “People really thought Bam's gonna move away and become a rock star with a big national touring act. It wasn't like it might happen. It was like, 'If he could hold his (expletive) together long enough to do a good audition….’”

Sversvold did have trouble holding it together, though, Cornelius says, chalking it up to “a combination of drugs, alcohol and poor decision making.”

That could get in the way of some friendships. “But he was such a sweet guy, there were always people on his side,” Cornelius says.

Sversvold often got behind the kit with JFA when they came through the Valley.

“Whatever drummer we had, had to let him come in because it's (expletive) Bam-Bam,” Brannon says. “He's a permanent member of the band. Anytime he wants to come back and play, he's welcome.”

Bam's bands included Mighty Sphincter, Rabid Rabbit and the Harvest

Sversvold played in countless other local bands, from Mighty Sphincter and the Harvest, both of which he joined while still in JFA, to Project Terror, Rabid Rabbit, Badass Mother(expletive), Soothsayer, Blasting Agents, Medieval Knievels, Vox Poppers, Black Pelikan, Asses of Evil, Medicine and Lifesize Monsters.

Cornelius was blown away by Sversvold’s drumming when he saw him play with Mighty Sphincter.

“I honestly could not believe the stuff that he could do on drums,” he says. “It was just like, 'Holy (expletive), he can do that?!'

"He would groove through those weird time signatures while twirling sticks, putting on a show, waving his hair around, all sorts of body gestures to emphasize everything. My jaw was on the floor.”

He’d seen Sversvold with JFA hundreds of times.

“But to see him doing something that was way more challenging with the kind of style he did it with and pull it off so beautifully? It was nuts.”

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Bam-Bam's mom says she knew music was his destiny

Sversvold had been living with his mother, Joanne Sversvold, who was by his side the day he died.

“From the time he was probably about a year and a half old, he was just music,” his mother recalls.

“He used to dance in front of the stereo. If you remember the old little Buster Brown T-shirts with the collar on them, he'd have one of those on and either a diaper or training pants and he'd just be dancing away.”

He was 6 when he got his first drum kit.

A friend from the neighborhood, Kevin McMahon (whose father, Pat McMahon, is a broadcasting legend known for his work on “The Wallace and Ladmo Show”) took him under his wing at 10 and taught him how to play.

“Kevin was about two years older than Michael and he actually got Michael interested in drums because he was playing drums,” Joanne recalls. “By the time probably not even a year had gone by, he said Michael was much better than he would ever be.”

By 15, the drummer had dropped out of high school to hit the road with JFA.

“I was sorry to see him go,” Joanne recalls. “But I knew it was his destiny because he was just born to be a musician. He played guitar also. But his drums ran a million circles around his guitar.”

When Sversvold moved in with his mom about 4½ years ago, they developed a Friday night ritual — watching videos on YouTube.

“A lot of the groups, he knew the guys because he'd met them and performed with them,” she says.

“He knew so many people. They would keep running into each other, and when their bands would come in town, he'd always have a free pass to go backstage and meet with them and whatnot. He was really, really well-known.”

Seeing JFA 'changed everything' for young punks in Phoenix

Seeing JFA in 1984 at Madison Square Garden, an event space at 37th and Van Buren streets where Victor did as many as 100 shows, was a life-changing experience for Michael Pistrui of Fat Gray Cat.

“My very first punk-rock show was JFA, T.S.O.L., Poets Corner and Conflict at Mad Gardens,” Pistrui recalls. “We were Chandler kids, skateboarders. And for us, it changed everything. We all went home and started a band.”

Pistrui and his friends were pretty much the target audience for skate-rock.

“We were skateboarders and they were skateboarders,” Pistrui says. “Not only that, but on the cover of their records, they're either skating or holding skateboards. That was a big deal. To us, they were rock stars.”

Pistrui and his friends were skating at an empty pool in Chandler once when JFA showed up and started skating with them.

“I mean, are you kidding me?” Pistrui says. “That was like having Van Halen show up.”

In addition to being an amazing drummer, Sversvold “personified punk rock” to Pistrui.

“His attitude, how he carried himself, he was it,” Pistrui says. “He was also a hell of a skateboarder. So that was cool, too.”

Losing Sversvold is a sad day for the local scene, Pistrui says. “He's an important part of music history in Arizona. And he left a big mark."

'It was a spectacle to watch Bam play the drums'

Reardon recalls being awestruck by the drummer in those early years.

“He was amazing to watch,” Reardon says.

“It was crazy to see someone who was just a few years older than I was seeming like an expert on his instrument. I think he probably inspired more people than anyone in that scene. Just because it was a spectacle to watch Bam play the drums.”

And that applied to every band he saw with Sversvold on the kit.

“There was a band called Soothsayer that was very much on the Metallica kind of tip,” Reardon says. "And we would talk about how he was their lead drummer.”

Denise “Dee” Moreno was with Sversvold and his mother when the drummer died. They’d been friends for decades. Moreno had a feeling they might get along after reading an interview with JFA in Flipside magazine in 1982, a year before she moved to Phoenix.

“Bam-Bam and his wild answers to the questions caught my attention and stuck in my head,” she says.

Not long after moving to Phoenix, Moreno saw JFA live at Mad Gardens.

“I was in awe of Bam’s musical talent, but mostly how he was a natural entertainer,” she recalls.

Bam 'had an innate ability to make people feel accepted and important'

They lost touch through the years but ended up sharing a living space for two years after reconnecting when JFA did a 25th anniversary reunion at Hollywood Alley in Mesa in 2006.

“It wasn’t until that time that I learned that he was much, much more than just a legendary local stake-punk band member that everyone recognized,” Moreno says.

“He had a huge heart, was a musical genius and was overall larger than life. Those that came in contact with him knew he had an innate ability to make people feel accepted and important, that they all had the ability for a creative contribution to life.”

He even inspired Moreno to join a band.

“He was there when I played my very first show as a bass player with the Lori Bravo band on New Year's Eve 2007, cheering me on,” she says. “I likely would never have been in The Cosmeticators in 2008, had it not been for his encouragement, influence, and helping me to believe in myself.”

Having spent a lot of time with Sversvold in his final years, Moreno feels she came to understand what he saw as his purpose in life.

“To follow his passion for music, bring people together with fun and laughter, and enjoy life to its fullest with anyone that would join him on that journey,” she says. “That’s what he was here to show us.”

'I just hope he understood how much he meant to us'

Like Moreno, CeCe Holley had become one of the drummer’s closest friends in recent years.

“We met through shows, like probably most people,” Holley says.

The death in 2009 of a mutual friend, Vince Bocchini, who played with Sversvold in Rabid Rabbit, brought them closer.

“That was sort of the first time we leaned on each other for support,” she says.

In late 2010, she moved into a house just down the street from Sversvold’s mom, and he became a frequent party guest, often spending the weekend or the week “as was the case with him a lot,” Holley says with a laugh.

When Sversvold moved in with his mom, he and Holley became even closer.

“People might have looked at him and seen this punk guy with this gruff exterior,” she says.

“But he was such a sweetheart, very compassionate, loved animals. I don't think I ever heard him say 'I hate that guy' or anything even close to that kind of anger most of us display at some point.”

In 2020, Sversvold talked to Phoenix New Times about taking a step back from the music scene.

“I left Lifesize Monsters a while ago because I need to get my health together for a while,” he said.

“I’ve got really bad arthritis, and I have vertigo. I blacked out last summer and fell onto some gravel. I woke up with second-degree burns. I walk with a cane now. I do plan to get up and play drums again someday. I’ve been playing drums since I was 10.”

That tight connection to the local scene “meant everything” to Sversvold, Holley says.

“This whole community, these bands, this music and these people were his life. And I just hope he understood how much he meant to us. That's the thing I keep trying to send out to his energy is that he meant the world to us, too, you know? I don't know if this scene is ever really gonna be the same without him. It's almost like there's a piece missing now.”

Celebration of life for Bam-Bam Sversvold

The Rhythm Room in Phoenix will host a celebration of Michael "Bam-Bam" Sversvold’s life on Saturday, July 20. His JFA bandmates will perform acoustically, in addition to other friends, including Fat Gray Cat, Medieval Knievels and Tony Karaba doing Rabid Rabbit songs with his group Peace Through Power. All proceeds will be donated to Sversvold’s mother, Joanne.

Details: 1-6 p.m. Saturday, July 20. 1019 E. Indian School Road, Phoenix. $15. rhythmroom.com.

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @EdMasley and facebook.com/ed.masley

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: JFA drummer Mike 'Bam-Bam' Sversvold dead at 57