Photo: WireImage
Long before Robert Trujillo was in Metallica or in Ozzy Osbourne's band, he was opening for Ozzy with his funk-metal side project Infectious Grooves.
Opening for Ozzy was a huge opportunity for the band, but Trujillo tells Revolver that, in his excitement, he nearly blew it on the first night.
"We had a beer and we're like creeping around backstage as Ozzy's playing," he said. "And it's dark — and I tripped over a pile of cables. I basically fell [into the] connectors for the monitors, the power lines and everything — and I knocked out the power to the monitor system! It was like slow motion: I see myself falling ... and I'm knocking out like three of the input jacks, and all of the sudden the power's out onstage."
One of Ozzy's crew saw what happened and leaped into action to reconnect the wires before it could ruin the show. Trujillo was sure he was busted and that was the end of Infectious Grooves' tour.
"I was like, 'Oh, man, we're going home," he recalled. "I went into the catering and I was trying to just play it off. ...And Ozzy's tour manager came behind me and he was really nice about it, luckily. He put his arm around me and said, 'Robert, did you knock out the power to the monitor rig?' And then I said, 'Yes.'
"And he goes, 'OK, don't do that again, please.' I go, 'Are we going home?' And he goes, 'No, just don't do that again. ... You're lucky. Ozzy thinks that there was a power outage in Austin.' ...It was a cursed first gig. Welcome to the world of Ozzy Osbourne."
Ozzy himself either never learned the truth or forgave Trujillo. Within a few years, Trujillo was in Ozzy's band. He notes that he never would have gotten the job in Metallica had it not been for his work with Ozzy in the late-'90s.
The two have remained friends and Ozzy brought Trujillo back to the studio last year to play bass on his latest solo album, Patient Number 9.