**Metallica’s Robert Trujillo: Playing Black Sabbath’s Back to the Beginning Fest Is the ‘Closing of a Chapter’**
*The rocker got his start playing bass for Ozzy Osbourne before joining Metallica…
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The desert sun was just beginning to dip below the horizon when Robert Trujillo stepped onto the massive stage at *Back to the Beginning Fest*, a three-day celebration of heavy metal’s foundational gods. This wasn’t just any festival. It was Black Sabbath’s grand, final bow—a gathering of the living legends and those they inspired. For Trujillo, standing here tonight wasn’t just another gig—it was something far more personal. It was, as he told a small group of reporters backstage, “the closing of a chapter.”
Wearing a sleeveless black shirt, bass slung low and a quiet intensity in his eyes, Trujillo glanced across the sea of fans stretching out into the Mojave dusk. This was hallowed ground. He wasn’t just playing *with* Sabbath—he was playing *because of* them.
“This is where it all began for me,” he said, voice gravelly from decades of screaming into the void. “My earliest memories of picking up a bass, of wanting to play music at all—it was Sabbath, it was Geezer \[Butler]. Then I got the gig with Ozzy, and the rest just kind of unfolded.”
Indeed, long before joining Metallica in 2003, Trujillo had built his reputation playing for Suicidal Tendencies, Infectious Grooves, and eventually for the Prince of Darkness himself—Ozzy Osbourne. As Ozzy’s bassist in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Trujillo found himself sharing rehearsal rooms, studios, and smoky tour buses with the very people who shaped heavy metal. It was there, under Ozzy’s wing, that he learned how to deliver riffs with soul-crushing power—and it was there he met the legend he still calls “his bass god”: Geezer Butler.
“Geezer didn’t just play bass,” Trujillo said. “He *told stories* with it. I remember the first time I watched him live, standing side stage with Ozzy. I was just like, ‘Damn… this is different. This is sacred.’”
That reverence came full circle when the lineup for *Back to the Beginning Fest* was first announced. Trujillo received a personal invitation from Butler himself to join Sabbath onstage for a special rendition of “Hand of Doom” and “N.I.B.” It would mark the first time Trujillo played those tracks live with the original lineup—minus drummer Bill Ward, who had bowed out due to health issues.
In rehearsal, he was all business. He didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. “You don’t mess with Geezer’s parts,” he said with a grin. “You live in them. You respect them. You try to *channel* that energy.”
Ozzy, now 76 and battling his own health demons, was there too, backstage in a specially outfitted trailer with oxygen tanks and a rotating cast of handlers. When he saw Trujillo, his eyes lit up.
“Robbie!” Ozzy shouted, throwing his arms open in mock exaggeration. “You still owe me twenty bucks from 2001!”
They laughed, embraced, and then slipped into the easy camaraderie of two veterans who had seen it all—the highs, the madness, the close calls, and the road that led them both here. “You gonna kill it tonight?” Ozzy asked, serious now.
Trujillo nodded. “For you. For Geezer. For all of it.”
As the festival crowd swelled to nearly 90,000 strong, Trujillo stood in the wings, bass in hand, watching a montage of vintage Sabbath footage roll across the screen. There were clips of Birmingham in the 1970s, Ozzy biting the head off a bat (yes, again), and black-and-white stills of the young band in tattered denim. Then came the roaring voice of Tony Iommi over the PA: “Ladies and gentlemen… this is where it all began.”
And with that, Sabbath took the stage.
The band launched into “War Pigs,” and though Iommi’s fingers moved slower than they once did, the riff still carried that primal weight. Ozzy’s voice cracked and wavered, but the audience carried him. And then, midway through the set, Trujillo was summoned onstage for “N.I.B.”
He walked out quietly, head slightly bowed, like a student entering a sacred temple. Geezer stepped aside, nodded once, and handed him the low end.
What happened next was more than performance—it was communion.
Trujillo didn’t just play. He *became* the riff. His fingers danced and growled across the strings, locking in with Iommi’s chug and the thunderous substitute drummer, Vinnie Appice. For a brief moment, time folded in on itself. Sabbath’s legacy wasn’t just alive—it was reborn in Trujillo’s hands.
After the set, the band huddled briefly backstage. Ozzy kissed Trujillo on the forehead. “You carried the spirit tonight,” he said.
Later, in a quieter corner of the backstage area, Trujillo reflected on the night. “This wasn’t just about music,” he said. “It was about honoring a lineage. I owe Sabbath and Ozzy *everything*. Without them, I don’t know if I’d be here—literally or musically.”
He paused, looking out at the desert again. The stars had started to emerge, twinkling above the endless black silhouette of the mountains.
“I’ve been lucky. I joined the biggest metal band in the world, played stages most people only dream of. But Sabbath? This was the seed. Playing with them tonight? That’s not just an honor—it’s a *closure*. It’s the closing of a chapter.”
And perhaps it was. As the final notes of Sabbath’s encore rang out—“Children of the Grave,” with Trujillo and Butler trading bass lines in a furious final blaze—something unspoken passed between the musicians. A torch, maybe. Or a blessing.
For Robert Trujillo, the kid who grew up in Santa Monica air-drumming to Sabbath records, this night was never about legacy or fame. It was about coming home, saying thank you, and then stepping quietly into the next chapter of his own.
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*Watch exclusive footage of
Trujillo’s historic Sabbath performance below ⬇️ ⬇️*
