Sharon Osbourne disputes release of early Black Sabbath demos, responds to ex-manager Jim Simpson
The ongoing battle over Black Sabbath’s early demo recordings has reignited tensions between Sharon Osbourne and the band’s first manager, Jim Simpson. The dispute surfaced after Sharon publicly called out Simpson during a new episode of The Osbournes Podcast, accusing him of planning to release pre–Black Sabbath-era material without the group’s consent.
Simpson, who managed the band in the late ’60s when they performed under the name Earth, issued a press release (shared via Loudwire) insisting he legally owns the recordings and has every right to release them under the title Earth: The Legendary Lost Tapes. Sharon countered his claim with a detailed Instagram post on Saturday (15th), sharing screenshots of emails she says prove she warned Simpson not to proceed without the band’s approval.
Read Sharon’s statement below:
“In response to Jim Simpson’s press release of 14 November 2025, I am enclosing his original email to Tony Iommi and my subsequent emails to Mr. Simpson. As you can see, my emails to Mr. Simpson were not threatening. I was clearly stating the facts about Black Sabbath’s legal position.
Regarding his claim that Big Bear Records is the “longest-running independent record label in the UK, this is a false claim. “Topic Records” is a British folk music label. It began as an offshoot of the Workers’ Music Association in 1939, making it the oldest independent record label in the world. It still operates today. Big Bear is not even a Limited company and does not file open accounts in public.
Simpson also states that he is “….in the process of relaunching Big Bear Records in a new distribution partnership with Trapeze Music & Entertainment Ltd (director being John Cooper), a well-established company with a huge catalogue including the likes of Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, Marlene Dietrich, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Digby Fairweather and hundreds of other artists. I seriously doubt that the artists he mentions, or their estates, would have authorized them to be sold in the USA.
Let it be known that Trapeze Music is an “out-of-copyright” UK based label that is in debt for £539,000 and the entertainment division is in debt for £1.442 million. A previous entity under the Trapeze banner, with the director, (being John Cooper), was Discovery Records Limited, which went into liquidation in 2018 with an estimated deficiency of £1,407,388. These artist recordings he mentions appear NOT to be out of copyright in the USA, but Trapeze sells through a us domestic import distributor called MVD who they claim inadvertently put the BLACK SABBATH recordings online digitally in the USA and then quickly withdraw them when Simpson’s lawyers were told the Black Sabbath material is not out of copyright, despite the fact they had agreed not to release them to the public without giving us 14 days prior notice.”
Meanwhile, within the same Osbournes podcast, Sharon, Kelly, and Jack revealed some unsettling fan encounters following Ozzy’s death, including a woman who mailed them her toenails and blood, claiming to be Ozzy’s daughter. “We’ve had quite a few nutters coming out of the woodwork saying they’re speaking to dad from the grave,” Kelly shared, as the family laughed off what’s become yet another surreal chapter in their lives.
