Sharon Osbourne has called for Black Sabbath’s first manager not to release an album of the band’s earliest recordings.
In June, it was announced that a compilation of demos that Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward recorded in 1969 when they still went by the name Earth was to be released under the title ‘Earth: The Legendary Lost Tapes’.
The tracks were recorded in Zella Studios in Birmingham and the new release was set to be overseen by Jim Simpson, the band’s manager at the time, with an initial release date of July this year.
That release did not happen, however, and now Sharon Osbourne has spoken out against the project. She issued a detailed social media post on Saturday (November 15) in which she outlined the Black Sabbath legal position, which disputes the legal ownership of the recordings.
She has also shared an email that she claims she sent to Simpson in July. “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,” she wrote. “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 [when and] where their rights are infringed, both here and in America.”
Sharon Osbourne also criticised the release on a recent episode of The Osbournes podcast, in which she made a series of claims, including disputing Simpson’s claim that he paid £500 for the studio session in 1969, and claiming he intended to keep all of the profits for himself.
That podcast prompted a response from Simpson, who said (via Blabbermouth): “It’s such a shame Sharon has decided to go all out on the attack without sitting down to talk about this. It’s also very unfair of her to make such inaccurate and potentially defamatory comments.”
He has also said he still wants “all bandmembers to receive royalties from the album in the usual way”, and clams he offered to meet with Sharon this July. “If they want to strike a deal with me to launch this album, I would therefore be delighted to discuss that with them,” he said.
As it stands, ‘Earth: The Legendary Lost Tapes’ has not been released.
In other news, the Osbourne family recently revealed that both Donald Trump and King Charles reached out to them after Ozzy’s death in July.
They also revealed that Ozzy was secretly hospitalised just two weeks before his final concert. While he had struggled with a number of medical conditions over the years– including Parkinson’s Disease – Jack shared that “things started getting worse” in the first week of December 2024, when Ozzy “took a little fall”.
