Metallica bassist Rob Trujillo has reflected on a “cursed” gig he did in his early days with Infectious Groove, where he managed to unplug Ozzy Osbourne’s monitor system mid-way through his performance.
Trujillo told Revolver Magazine that he and his band at the time, Infectious Grooves, headed off on a tour to support Ozzy Osbourne back in 1996 after meeting the rocker in a recording studio.
“There’s kind of a crazy story that happened in Austin, Texas. … When Infectious Grooves first opened for Ozzy it was a theater in Austin. We were really excited. We had done a warm-up show just before that in Houston — and now we’re pulling up to the back of the venue in Austin,” Trujillo reflected.
“And the first thing we see when we get off the tour bus is … a pentagram on the ground and a dead raven, black roses and candles. And we’re like, Oh my God. [Laughs] It’s like, Welcome to the tour. We’re literally like, ‘What are we getting ourselves into?'”
And, the bad omens seem to signal what was in store for Trujillo that night. He explained that after Infectious Grooves finished playing their show to an audience who largely had no clue who they were, he managed to kick out Osbourne’s monitor system.
Ozzy’s playing, and we’re all excited. I think it was myself and two of the band members we had a beer and we’re like creeping around the backstage as Ozzy’s playing 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 a sudden the power’s out onstage.”
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“All you hear is Ozzy and the drums, acoustically. Ozzy looked over, everybody looked over and no one knew what happened. I was so scared. Luckily the monitor guy saw that that’s what happened. And he was able to patch it back in really quickly.
Fortunately, Trujillo said that Osbourne’s manager was very forgiving over the gaffe.
zzy’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, ‘Okay, 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.’ [Laughs]
“I just remember that because between the pentagram and that being our introduction to the crowd in a small venue to me knocking out the power to the monitor rig…”
“It was a cursed first gig. Welcome to the world of Ozzy Osbourne,” he laughed.
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