in this story published earlier this week<\/a>.<\/p>\nWith Simpson\u2018s rebuttal arriving after Sharon\u2018s initial comments on the podcast, Sharon has now followed up today, November 15th, with the following statement on social media:<\/p>\n
\u201cIn response to Jim Simpson\u2019s 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\u2019s legal position.<\/p>\n
Regarding his claim that Big Bear Records is the \u201clongest-running independent record label in the UK, this is a false claim. \u201cTopic Records\u201d is a British folk music label. It began as an offshoot of the Workers\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
Simpson also states that he is \u201c\u2026.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.<\/p>\n
Let it be known that Trapeze Music is an \u201cout-of-copyright\u201d UK based label that is in debt for \u00a3539,000 and the entertainment division is in debt for \u00a31.442 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 \u00a31,407,388. 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\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
A full legal opinion from Kings Council was provided to their UK lawyer. Trapeze\u2018s owner previously ran several companies that ended up in bankruptcy. We would never have allowed any BLACK SABBATH product to be released through Big Bear Records or Trapeze Music, and at no time did Simpson ever offer the band royalties, and he has continuously refused to let Black Sabbath hear the recordings that he claims are his. Their integrity is dubious.<\/p>\n
In closing, Mr. Simpson may claim that he invited me to have coffee with him on 4 July 2025 but I was out of contact which he well knew as I was at Villa Park at soundcheck all day, and I later heard that Mr. Simpson was busy that day doing a Q&A about his time managing Black Sabbath from \u201968-\u201970 at a pub called \u201cYe Olde Foundry\u201d in Dudley for personal commercial gain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sharon furthered her claims by republishing several emails in the below gallery of communications made in regards to the release and her and the band\u2019s efforts to thwart it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sharon Osbourne, widow and manager of the late Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath, has issued a new public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[89,2300,88,216,10227],"class_list":{"0":"post-294995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-black-sabbath","9":"tag-earth","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-sharon-osbourne"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}