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Ozzy Osbourne was once invited to audition for a role in Pirates of the Caribbean—but the opportunity was shut down by his longtime manager and wife, Sharon Osbourne.
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During a recent appearance on Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast, Sharon revealed what she considers the “biggest mistake” she ever made on the legendary Black Sabbath frontman’s behalf. “He got offered to go and read for Pirates of the Caribbean, and I’ve never said this to anyone,” she admitted to the Smashing Pumpkins frontman. “And I said no. Now wouldn’t he have been perfect?”
Corgan immediately agreed, responding, “He would have been perfect! Maybe it’s not too late, but God bless.”
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While it remains unclear which character Ozzy was being considered for, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has a history of casting rock legends. The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards famously played Captain Teague, the father of Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, in At World’s End (2007) and On Stranger Tides (2011).
Paul McCartney also made an appearance in Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) as Jack Sparrow’s uncle, Uncle Jack. Given Ozzy’s unmistakable persona and theatrical stage presence, it’s easy to imagine him fitting right into the swashbuckling world of the blockbuster franchise.
Beyond his near brush with Hollywood, Ozzy has remained active in music despite ongoing health struggles. In recent years, he released Patient Number 9 (2022), which earned a Grammy for Best Rock Album, and announced his retirement from touring due to health concerns. Meanwhile, Black Sabbath’s final reunion show is set to take place on July 5 in Birmingham, featuring appearances from Guns N’ Roses, Tool, and even actor Jason Momoa.
While Ozzy never got his shot at the high seas, his legacy as the Prince of Darkness remains untouchable—onstage and, perhaps, in an alternate timeline, on the big screen.
Drake’s Anita Max Win Tour in Australia continues to deliver viral moments—this time, with the rapper handing out $30,000 to a pregnant fan at his Sydney show at Qudos Bank Arena on Wednesday night (Feb. 19).
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During a break in his set, Drake was scanning the crowd for signs when he spotted one that read: “I’m 20 weeks pregnant.” In a video circulating social media, the “Hotline Bling” rapper immediately reacted with disbelief.
“Are you 20 weeks pregnant? Get out of the pit. Get outta there,” Drake told the fan, later identified as Tiana Henderson, before instructing security to move her to VIP seating. “Give her some VIP tickets immediately and like $30,000,” he added before jokingly asking, “Who the f—brings a baby to a mosh pit?”
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Henderson and her friend were then escorted out of the packed general admission area to a more comfortable spot in VIP.
Drake’s latest giveaway is just one of many on his Anita Max Win Tour, where he has been handing out cash to fans throughout Australia. At his Melbourne show earlier this month, he reportedly gifted a fan $25,000 after noticing a sign referencing his son, Adonis, and another $20,000 to a concertgoer celebrating her birthday. While performing in Perth, he handed out $40,000 to two fans, including one waving the Canadian flag.
Earlier this week, he made headlines again by giving $30,000 to a fan in Sydney who held up a sign asking for help to quit their job at McDonald’s. The rapper played into the Australian slang, repeating the request in an exaggerated Aussie accent: “Help us quit Maccas, mate.”
In addition to his on-stage giveaways, Drake has been using the tour to promote $ome $exy $ongs 4 U, his newly released joint album with longtime collaborator PARTYNEXTDOOR, who has joined him on-stage during his Australian tour.
Released on Feb. 14, the project has been a commercial success, earning over 56.6 million first-day streams on Spotify—making it the second-highest debut of the year. $ome $exy $ongs 4 U also broke the record for the biggest R&B/Soul album in Apple Music’s history by first-day streams worldwide.
Drake and Party are set to headline the first day of this year’s Wireless Festival in London with special guest Summer Walker in July. Drake will also headline the next two days with “The Mandem,” Burna Boy, and the Worl’ Boss Vybz Kartel by his side.
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Touring can bring its fair share of unexpected adventures, but for British rockers The Wombats, a night out in Rio de Janeiro took an unnerving turn when an argument with the wrong person led to a high-stakes chase back to their hotel.
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Frontman Matthew “Murph” Murphy explained the incident to The Daily Star’s Wired column, revealing that drama unfolded during a night out when tensions escalated between someone in the band’s group and a local they had unknowingly crossed paths with.
“We got chased in Rio by a gang. We were out, someone said the wrong thing, we were doing the wrong thing,” Murphy told the newspaper as per Music-News. “Somebody – I won’t say who got into an argument with this other guy, and didn’t realise who he was, or what he was in.”
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The moment of confrontation quickly turned into something more sinister. As the band piled into a taxi, they realized they were being followed. “Our taxi was chased back to the hotel by these two Land Rovers,” Murphy revealed. “I ran up to my hotel room, and our tour manager had to diffuse the situation.”
He added, “Apparently, it was pretty freaky.”
While the Rio incident might have been their most alarming encounter, it wasn’t the only dramatic moment the band faced while touring in Brazil. Just days earlier, The Wombats had to cut their set short in São Paulo after a cyclone wreaked havoc mid-performance.
“When we played in São Paulo, a freak cyclone hit the stage in the middle of our third track and completely soaked us,” Murphy told NME in Oct. “Wrote off all the gear. Some steel split, and the stage we were on had folded down.”
Despite the mayhem, the festival carried on, with The Strokes headlining later that night under far-from-ideal conditions.
Murphy explained, “We were on the other stage, but it was facing the main stage where The Strokes were headlining. They went on that night, but all the drapes had come off, there was no screen, they were just playing against scaffolding. It was pretty ridiculous.”
The Wombats will soon kick off their upcoming arena run across the U.K. in March 2025. The band will take the stage in cities including London, Nottingham, Cardiff, and Manchester, with additional festival appearances lined up later in the year, following the release of their sixth studio album, Oh! The Ocean.
Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus is hitting the road this April, though this time he’ll be promoting his new book instead of a new record.
The bassist and vocalist of the enduring Californian pop-punk band announced in late 2024 that he would be releasing his forthcoming memoir, Fahrenheit-182, on April 8. Co-authored with Los Angeles-based journalist and author Dan Ozzi, the book takes an in-depth look at Hoppus’ storied life, detailing his childhood in the ‘80s, a formative obsession with punk rock, skateboards and MTV, and how it all led towards his co-founding Blink-182 in August 1992.
“Threaded through with the very human story of a constant battle with anxiety and Mark’s public battle and triumph over cancer, Fahrenheit-182 is a delight for fans and also a funny, smart, and relatable memoir for anyone who has wanted to quit but kept going,” a description reads.
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“This book has everything,” Hoppus himself said in a promotional clip for the book. “A young man, born in the California desert, joins a punk rock band and goes on to conquer the world! It’s got skateboarding! It’s got punk rock clubs! It’s got ’90s music! But that’s not all! Pre-order now and we’ll throw in with no extra cost to you: Anxiety! Depression! Band breakups! Loss of self! Suicidal thoughts and ideation! And of course everyone’s favorite: cancer! This shit gets dark.”
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Now, Hoppus will be taking the book to the people, announcing a seven-date tour which will see him in conversation with a moderator as he discusses its writing and contents, and pairs it all with his trademark humor. The tour launches in New York City on April 9, and visits Somerville, MA; Washington D.C.; Philadelphia and Chicago, before wrapping up with two dates in California as he visits El Cajon and Los Angeles.
Tickets for Hoppus’ tour are on sale as of Feb. 21, with the musician urging audiences to buy up to ensure they “don’t miss out on all the small things.”
Hoppus’ tour comes following a busy couple of years for Blink-182 which saw them touring the world in support of their ninth studio album, One More Time…. The record was their third to peak atop the Billboard 200, and their first to feature co-founding guitarist and vocalist Tom DeLonge since his 2022 return, having split with the group for a second time seven years earlier.
This week also saw Hoppus announce the impending auction of a rare Banksy artwork that he acquired in 2011. The painting will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London on March 4, and is expected to sell for up to $6.3 million.
Mark Hoppus 2025 Book Tour Dates
April 9 – Brooklyn Paramount, New York, NYApril 10 – Somerville Theatre, Somerville, MAApril 12 – The 9:30 Club, Washington D.C.April 13 – The Fillmore, Philadelphia, PAApril 16 – Park West, Chicago, ILApril 18 – The Magnolia, El Cajon, CAApril 20 – The Wiltern, Los Angeles, CA
A private funeral service for Murder Inc. co-founder Irv Gotti was held Wednesday (Feb. 19) at the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral of New York. Among those in attendance, according to TMZ, were Murder Inc. artists Ja Rule, Ashanti, Lloyd, Charli Baltimore and Vita. Also at the service, in addition to Gotti’s family, were Jay-Z (sitting […]
Kansas frontman Ronnie Platt revealed on Saturday (Feb. 15) that he’s been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He took to his social media, writing, “For all of you asking, Tuesday [February 11] I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer but before everyone gets all excited, it has a 99% survival rate, it has not spread. It’s contained to […]
Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s Beverly Hills house was burglarized on Friday night (Feb. 14), law enforcement told The Los Angeles Times. The couple was thankfully not home at the the time of the incident. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Officers reportedly responded to a report […]
Ye — formerly Kanye West — is walking back earlier statements labeling himself a Nazi. West came to the realization on Wednesday (Feb. 19), retracting his previous statements in a new post to X.
“After further reflection I’ve come to the realization that I’m not a Nazi,” he wrote.
The backtracking on his heavily criticized comments — which saw him praising Adolf Hitler — comes just over a week since his series of antisemitic, homophobic and hate-filled X tirades earlier in February.
“I love Hitler, how what bi—es,” Ye wrote, which he followed up with, “I’m a Nazi.” He later added, “Hitler was sooooo fresh” and “call me Yaydolf Yitler.”
West had been selling T-shirts emblazoned with a black swastika logo for $20 on his Yeezy website, which was shut down by its marketplace partner Shopify.
West faced backlash for his remarks, as the Anti-Defamation League, Charlie Puth and Lyor Cohen all condemned Ye and pleaded with him to stop pushing antisemitic rhetoric.
“With antisemitism on the rise, your voice and influence carry a significant responsibility,” the former Def Jam president wrote in a letter to Ye. “I urge you to be more sensitive to the pain your words inflict on Jewish communities and all those who stand against hate.”
Back in October 2022, Ye fired off a series of antisemitic rants, including the “Death Con 3” tweet, which led to companies such as Adidas, Def Jam, Balenciaga, Gap and more cutting ties with the rapper.
“West is not just any person — he is a pop culture icon with millions of fans around the world,” Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel wrote at the time. “And among them are young people whose views are still being formed. This is why it is necessary for all of us to speak out. Hatred and anti-Semitism should have no place in our society, no matter how much money is at stake.”
In another post on X, Ye responded to Adam Sandler seemingly referencing the musician during his performance on the SNL50: The Anniversary Special over the weekend, singing, “50 years of finding out your favorite musician’s antisemitic.” Ye chose to focus on the “favorite musician” part of the lyric, responding to the comic actor on X: “Adam Sandler Thank you for the love.”
A$AP Rocky and Rihanna are going above and beyond a simple thank-you note to show their gratitude to Joe Tacopina — the lawyer who successfully led the rapper to a not guilty verdict in his felony shooting trial Tuesday (Feb. 19) — and it has to do with Baby No. 3.
In a video interview with Extra posted one day after the three-week legal proceedings wrapped up in Los Angeles, the attorney revealed that the couple jokingly promised to name their next child after him in celebration of their victory. “Rihanna and Rocky said to me in the courtroom yesterday, they grabbed me and they said, ‘Listen, our next baby is A$AP Joe,’” Tacopina told the outlet, smiling.
In theory, little A$AP Joe Mayers would join older brothers RZA, 2, and Riot, 1 — and Rocky and Rih have every reason to want to honor Tacopina. The Harlem native had been facing up to 24 years in prison over a November 2021 incident in which he’d been accused of firing a gun twice at former friend A$AP Relli, for which he was hit with two felony counts of assault with a firearm.
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But as seen by everyone in the court — and countless fans watching along — Rocky proved to be victorious in his fight against both counts, which he celebrated as soon as his not guilty verdict was read out by sprinting away from the defendant’s stand, jumping straight over a courtroom railing, and wrapping the Fenty mogul in a big hug. “THE GLORY BELONGS TO GOD AND GOD ALONE! THANKFUL, HUMBLED BY HIS MERCY!” Rihanna wrote on Instagram Stories shortly afterward.
Recalling the passionate moment from his POV, Tacopina told Extra, “I look to my right, he’s gone … he was just gone,” the lawyer said, laughing. “I said to my partner, ‘Did he leave?’ … And I see him on top of Rihanna… I couldn’t process quickly enough.”
Tacopina — whom Rocky also christened “A$AP Joe” outside the courthouse after the ruling — went on to share how close he and the two stars have gotten since they started working together on the case. He was even on hand to babysit RZA in 2023 back when Rih was preparing for her Super Bowl halftime show performance.
“All of a sudden, Rocky said, ‘Can you just take care of a baby? I’m getting a pedicure,’” Tacopina recalled. “There was a different type of relationship with him than with most clients.”
Watch Tacopina break down Rocky’s court win below.
Opening less than two weeks ago, Becoming Led Zeppelin is already nearing $6 million in international box office gross. In an era where most documentaries head straight to streaming, the rock doc’s box office run – not the mention the fact that it’s playing on IMAX screens – is a small coup. “I must say that feedback from fans is just humbling and inspiring,” lead guitarist Jimmy Page wrote on social media.
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It’s also a source of great pride for co-directors Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty, who were told the film wouldn’t make four bucks by one skeptical studio. According to MacMahon and McGourty, all the major studios except Song Pictures Classics passed on Becoming Led Zeppelin. That’s more than a bit surprising given the legendary band’s cross-generational popularity and the fact that the directors scored extensive interviews with the band’s elusive surviving members. But it’s fitting, too – it wouldn’t be the first time Led Zeppelin faced indifferent (or outright hostile) critics and proved them wrong.
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While Zep’s career spans nine albums and 12 years, effectively ending when drummer John Bonham died in 1980, this film focuses on the band’s early days, using interviews, rare archival footage and an unbeatable soundtrack (just try to resist headbanging in the theater) to tell the story of how four British boys from divergent backgrounds created an alchemic mixture of blues, hard rock, R&B and folk that changed the way rock bands played, recorded and toured.
Billboard sat down with co-directors MacMahon and McGourty to learn how they locked in interviews with Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones, why the film stops after Led Zeppelin II and how some of the band’s contemporaries reacted to screenings of the movie.
You both worked together on American Epic, a wildly impressive and comprehensive 2017 documentary about the first recordings of blues, country and folk music in the United States. Did that help you land the surviving members of Led Zeppelin for this documentary? That series is very much their kind of music. Bernard MacMahon: It’s the fundamental reason why this film exists. Allison McGourty: There wouldn’t be Becoming Led Zeppelin without American Epic. MacMahon: Allison had this idea to do American Epic and tell the story of the first blues, gospel, country and Cajun records made in America and the 1920s and ‘30s. So she got a filmmaker friend of hers, Geoff Wonfor, who had done The Beatles Anthology films, to meet with me to persuade me this was a good idea for a movie. We made it under Allison’s leadership, and afterward, I came to her and said, “You know what would be a great follow-up film? When I was 12 years old, I read this little paperback book about Led Zeppelin. It’s long out of print, it was published in the ‘70s, and it’s the early story and it contains all this information that has been lost. It’s not part of the Led Zeppelin lexicon, it’s been replaced by all these tabloid books in the ‘80s written by a bloke who went on tour with them for a week.” This book was by a guy, Howard Mylett, who really had access to them. I read it when I was 12 and I found it inspirational, these four kids from different parts of Britain trying to make their way in music. McGourty: That was unusual. Two were from London, two were from the West Midlands. Normally that would never happen: The Rolling Stones were all from London, the Beatles were all from Liverpool. It’s hard for people from the West Midlands to break into the music scene so it was a bit of a miracle they got together at all. And their own back stories are entirely different. Jimmy Page had the support of his mom; John Paul Jones came from a showbiz family, his mom and dad were vaudeville performances; John Bonham, his parents didn’t mind what he did as long as he looked after his family; and Robert Plant got thrown out because he wouldn’t become an accountant. He became homeless. The part of the film where he talks about being homeless is pretty emotional. And then of course when they did get together, it was still an uphill battle. MacMahon: Peter Grant couldn’t get them a record deal in the U.K. No one got [their music]. People wouldn’t book the band. They had to go to America and did it on their own terms. Vanilla Fudge were the only group that took them under their wing and supported them. How did you manage to land Page, Plant and Jones for sit-down, on-camera interviews about Led Zeppelin? That’s rare.MacMahon: We had done months and months of preparations, including tracking down every interview of John Bonham. A couple people who knew what we were doing said we were absolutely mad (since the band) had said no to every film. But we believed and carried on doing the work. This is a message to the readers: work hard and follow your dreams. There’s nothing special about me – I’m not Francis Ford Coppola’s son, I’m not sitting with a pile of Academy Awards, but we did do this movie, American Epic, that we worked really hard on for 10 years, and we did not take short cuts. That meant when we got to (the band) and they happened to have seen (American Epic), they knew there were no short cuts in that movie — no stone was unturned — and they thought, “Well, they’re gonna apply that to us.” Which we did. It was a five-hour meeting with John Paul Jones, something similar with Robert Plant and Pat Bonham and a seven-hour meeting with Jimmy Page. There’s a lot of stuff about their pre-Zeppelin days in the film that I bet a lot of fans didn’t know. MacMahon: I remember, I said to (Page), “This is the point where you see Robert singing for the first time.” He goes, “What was the name of the group?” “Obs-Tweedle.” He was testing you?MacMahon: Yeah! When we got to the end he said, “This is a great film and we’d be honored to have you make it.” He gave us artistic freedom. They let us make the movie, they did not edit the film. That never happens. (With most) successful groups, they control everything. McGourty: They did come in with additional photographs and recordings that had never been released before. MacMahon: Stuff we’d never seen before. After intending to never do it, when they did agree to do it — and we were honored — they turned up full throttle, in the way Led Zeppelin does on stage. They came with bags of stuff. They came intending to be candid and honest. It’s so emotional watching them is because the additional material made it more emotional. When John Paul Jones is talking about this priest who said, “You can be organist and choir master” to him at 14 years old, I’d been showing him pictures of that church. That church was bulldozed two years after he was there. It’s completely lost to time. So he’s looking at this and remembering this wonderful guy, so the emotions are fresh. You talk about how Led Zeppelin owned the recordings of their first album in the film. They were pretty savvy about their publishing as well. Was there anything about the band’s business strategies, or Grant’s business practices, that you learned in the interviews that didn’t make the film? MacMahon: I wanted to make a film that when I was 13, I would have seen in my local cinema and would want to watch three or four times. What we put in the film was what we thought was useful if you’re a kid starting out. There’s a point where you stop with the minutiae and go, “Maybe for a later day.” What we wanted to get across with big brushstrokes emotionally that would resonate with a kid was that these guys never sat on their hands. Whether they were struggling like Robert Plant and John Bonham in the Midlands, or part of the session music scene like Jimmy and Jonesy were, they were studying every single thing. Jimmy was coming in to do a session and he’s leaning over to see what the engineer is doing, as well as playing his part. And Robert was trying everything. Before Led Zeppelin he was singing with Alexis Korner, the father of the British blues scene. They were putting themselves out there and trying everything. And that’s the message. All the things (people are) being told they need to do now: TikTok, Instagram, you don’t need all that stuff. You just need two or three of you, and ideally as broad of tastes as possible to make it as colorful as possible, and then follow what your gut is telling you to do. But you gotta be out there and you gotta work and you gotta be studying. Let your response with the audience – even if it’s 10 people, then 15 people – inform what you’re doing. But don’t let those people tell you what to do. And that’s the message we as filmmakers found when we were getting to the rough cut. We brought it to every studio and every major studio apart from Sony Pictures Classics was like, “No one will ever watch this movie. Nobody will watch full Led Zeppelin songs in a cinema.”McGourty: Someone told us we wouldn’t get four dollars for this film. We carried on anyway. It paralleled (the story in the film). MacMahon: The Led Zeppelin story was a lesson to us as we were making this film. The film doesn’t get into any of the more salacious rumors about the band. Was that part of the feedback from studios — they wanted more scandal in the film? MacMahon: Some of that, yeah. They thought people would only sit and watch films about debauchery. McGourty: Led Zeppelin became the biggest band in the world because of their music. That’s what people love and what fans want to hear. MacMahon: This film allows you to hear the music in the purest way possible. This (movie features) the original lacquer cut done by Bob Ludwig in ’69. It’s a journey in sound — the exact sound it was meant to have. There’s no compression in the audio on this film. This is huge high peaks and troughs. It’s dynamics, which is what Led Zeppelin traded in. And that’s why audiences are responding to it – they’re getting the pure, high-quality stuff with no compression, no butchering. Were there any archival bits that were painful to cut?MacMahon: Nothing. McGourty: Peter Grant, if he caught someone filming at their gig, he would rip out the film, smash the camera, physically eject them. And they were not doing media. We’ve got every fragment known to exist. MacMahon: I just found out that some clip was (recently) discovered, but fortunately it was a song we already have a mind-boggling performance of in full-color and that (new one) was in black and white. The Beatles did insane amounts of publicity all the time, so there’s an endless supply of photo sessions and TV interviews. Zeppelin is the exact opposite. There’s so little. McGourty: In a way it made the film harder, since you have very little footage to work with, but it forced us to be creative. We’re very inspired by films of the Golden Era, Singin’ in the Rain, Frank Capra. We used lots of techniques from old movies like montage work. You see newspapers, contracts, tickets – we had over 6,000 artifacts digitized. (Everything you see in the film) is the real thing. MacMahon: We screened it for Bob Weir and Taj Mahal, who were kings of the counterculture in the Bay Area. They were there when Zeppelin broke through. Weir went over to me at the end of the film and said, “You know, this is game-changing stuff. Every kid should watch this to see this is what their grandparents did and how they did it. You know what I was thinking as I watched these guys? They reminded me of the John Coltrane trio with a singer. Or Pharoah Sanders with a singer.” That from Bob Weir, that tells you the level of musicianship he’s seeing. Taj Mahal saw it and said – McGourty: “That film re-arranged my molecules.”MacMahon: A guy who has been aware of this group for 55 years has his opinion expanded and changed from his preconceptions of the group.The film concludes after their second album, which I think is wise, as it allows you to really dig into their origin story instead of feeling beholden to tell the whole tale. Was that always the intention when you started this project?MacMahon: Yeah. In the story of Led Zeppelin, as in the story of anything that’s a great achievement, there’s a moment where you come from childhood with nothing, and you land on the moon or climb Everest. This is where the film ends – they’ve landed on the moon, they’re the biggest band on the planet and they finally have recognition in their home country. That is absolutely the conclusion of a two-hour cinematic film.