Black Sabbath 1970
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Sharon Osbourne has shared her disapproval of the impending release of a batch of early Black Sabbath demos recorded while the band was known as Earth.
In June, just weeks before Black Sabbath’s End of the Beginning concert and Ozzy Osbourne’s death, the band’s first manager Jim Simpson revealed plans to officially release recordings that Ozzy, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward recorded at Zella Studios in Birmingham, England, in 1969, just months before the foursome changed their name from Earth to Black Sabbath.
The Legendary Lost 1969 Tapes were originally due out in July but have not yet been released, apparently — as Sharon Osbourne revealed on social media Saturday — due to legal wrangling between Simpson’s Big Bear Music and the band themselves, including who actually owns the demo recordings and whether they are out of copyright in the U.S.
In a recent episode of The Osbournes podcast, Sharon criticized the plan to release the Earth recordings as well as questioned Simpson’s motives, with Simpson then issuing a lengthy statement responding to Sharon’s claims (via Blabbermouth).
The back-and-forth continued this weekend as Sharon took to social media to once again warn Simpson about the Earth tapes, as well as share emails she sent to Simpson urging him not to release the recordings.
“As you know, the Band do not want these tapes released, not least as they haven’t heard them despite you saying you would provide copies long ago,” Sharon wrote to Simpson in July. “You know that, as a band, Black Sabbath don’t take things lying down and you can be assured that if you go ahead with this against the Band’s wishes we will take any action we can where their rights are infringed, both here and in America.”
Sharon previously accused Simpson of keeping the Earth recordings “quiet for all these years because they’re now out of copyright, which is 50 years.” In addition to protesting the release of the Earth tapes themselves, Sharon took additional exception to The Legendary Lost 1969 Tapes being distributed by Big Bear Records and Trapeze Music. “We would never have allowed any Black Sabbath product to be released” through those labels, Sharon wrote.
The legal threats have ultimately pushed back the release of The Legendary Lost 1969 Tapes, as various online vendors have the album now arriving on varying dates ranging from December 2025 to February 2026, if at all.
From Rolling Stone US.
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