{"id":396267,"date":"2026-04-25T00:42:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T00:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/396267\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T00:42:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T00:42:13","slug":"black-sabbath-settle-dispute-over-early-demos-regain-ownership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/396267\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Sabbath Settle Dispute Over Early Demos, Regain Ownership"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe legal battle<\/a> over Black Sabbath<\/a>\u2019s early demos<\/a> has been resolved, with the four members regaining ownership of the songs they recorded in 1969 when they were known as Earth.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn June 2025, just weeks before Black Sabbath\u2019s End of the Beginning concert and\u00a0Ozzy Osbourne<\/a>\u2019s death, the band\u2019s first manager Jim Simpson revealed plans to officially release the Earth recordings<\/a> that\u00a0Ozzy, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward recorded at Zella Studios in Birmingham, England, in 1969, months before the foursome changed their name from Earth to Black Sabbath.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Legendary Lost 1969 Tapes\u00a0were set for release in July 2025 but never arrived, as Sharon Osbourne<\/a> revealed there was a behind-the-scenes legal battle<\/a> over ownership of the demos between the band and Simpson.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs you know, the Band do not want these tapes released, not least as they haven\u2019t heard them despite you saying you would provide copies long ago,\u201d Sharon wrote to Simpson in July. \u201cYou know that, as a band, Black Sabbath don\u2019t take things lying down and you can be assured that if you go ahead with this against the Band\u2019s wishes we will take any action we can where their rights are infringed, both here and in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFive months after going public with the dispute over the demos, Sharon announced on The Osbournes podcast that the situation has been resolved, with the four members of Black Sabbath \u2014 Osbourne, Iommi, Butler, and Ward \u2014 regaining control of the Earth recordings, Blabbermouth reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe settled with\u00a0Jim Simpson\u00a0and the band now have their demos back. And all four of them own it, which is where it should be. All of that stuff should be theirs. So it all ended well. So, yeah, they own them. We\u2019re gonna talk about what everybody wants to do with it, and we\u2019ll go from there,\u201d Sharon told her son Jack, adding that Simpson \u201cdid the right thing at the end of the day. He did the right thing for the band.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile The Legendary Lost 1969 Tapes won\u2019t be released as planned, Sharon was open to putting out the Earth demos at some point, pending the band\u2019s approval. \u201cI just think it\u2019s historically important \u2014 for music lovers of that genre,\u201d Sharon said. \u201cIt\u2019s special. And I\u2019m just happy that it\u2019s where it should be \u2014 with the band, and [they can decide] what they wanna do as a band, what they\u2019re gonna do with it. So that\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The legal battle over Black Sabbath\u2019s early demos has been resolved, with the four members regaining ownership of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[460,156,157,111,139,69,459,36497],"class_list":{"0":"post-396267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-black-sabbath","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-ozzy-osbourne","15":"tag-sharon-osbourne"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}