Rockford man gets Gift of Sound after decades in the concert industry hampered his hearing

‘Muzzy’ worked with some of the biggest names in rock, including Cheap Trick

By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — John Muzzarelli has a seemingly endless trove of stories from four decades in the concert industry, including eight as a roadie with Rockford’s Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Cheap Trick.

He can tell you about meeting John Lennon, working with Ozzy Osbourne, creating beach-like tailgating plans for Jimmy Buffett, and setting the stage for a young Taylor Swift back when she was the opening act for Tim McGraw.

“I pretty much worked with everybody while working for a promoter,” he said.

Muzzy, as his friends call him, can tell stories for days. But when friends talked back he’d often find himself leaning in close and responding with, “what?”

Muzzarelli, who is credited as stage manager on Cheap Trick’s famed live album “Cheap Trick at Budokan,” has struggled to hear for the past 15 years after a career filled with prolonged exposure to amplifiers and loud music.

“When you open for KISS with Cheap Trick for a year, Canadian and U.S. Tour, and you’re labeled the loudest band in rock-and-roll — there’s a reason for that,” Muzzarelli said. “We didn’t have flying systems then. All those speakers were a wall of speakers. Monitors were walls of monitors.”

On Tuesday, Muzzy got a gift that restored his hearing. The 72-year-old resident of PA Peterson in Rockford was provided free hearing aids through the Miracle-Ear Foundation’s Gift of Sound program. The program has donated more than 54,000 hearing aids since its founding in 1990.

“I won’t be saying ‘what’ anymore,” Muzzarelli said.

Muzzarelli got his new hearing aids on Tuesday at Miracle-Ear along Perryville Road in Rockford, where hearing instrument specialist Ashleigh Castanza helped him fit and test the new devices.

“Your TV is going to be more clear. You’re going to hear birds chirping again,” Castanza told him. “There’s going to be a lot of noises you’re going to hear that you haven’t been used to for quite some time.”

Muzzarelli had gone through some serious health issues over the past year. He knew he needed hearing aids, but the expenses of his past health complications would have made it unaffordable. He went for an evaluation at Miracle-Ear in Rockford, and they were able to provide him the devices through the Gift of Sound program.

“When you unmute those hearing aids and they immediately can hear, that’s the biggest gift,” Castanza said. “It’s the joy in seeing that their life has changed. When they walk through this door and they say, ‘I can hear my grandchildren again. I can understand people when we’re in a crowd.’ You change their lives and the lives of their loved ones.”

He said he’s eager to test the new devices at a concert.  He also is looking forward to having dinner with friends and being able to distinguish the sounds in the conversation. He often felt left out of conversation because all the sounds were jumbled together. He said his two children have told him for years he needed to do something about his hearing.

“I should’ve probably done this 15 years ago,” he said. “It wouldn’t have stopped this from happening, but I would’ve been better long ago.”

This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas