Queen-Sheer Heart Attack (1974)

 

Artist: Queen

Title: Sheer Heart Attack

Label: Elektra

Format: 8-Track

Cat #: ET 81026

Year of Release: 1974

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1974

Listed Condition: VG+/VG+

Sell Date: 9/24/25

Sell Price: $117.31

Discogs Last Sold: 1/10/18 NM/no cover $14.97

Low: $8.00

Median: $14.97

Average: $46.76

High: $117.31

Current low price: none

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 0

Have/Want: 39/209

Where Sold: Renton, WA

Time it took to sell: 1 year

Where and When Bought:  ebay 8-track lot

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: A-

Sad To See It Go: No

Occasionally there is an 8-track in my recently acquired boxes of them that pays off.  In a $30 lot last year was a nice copy of Queen's Sheer Heart Attack.  This was the only copy of this version up on Discogs, so even though it last sold in 2018 for $15, with a band like Queen, scarcity counts.  I put it up for around $150 initially and it fell to it's selling price $117.31 over the last year or two of blanket stock reductions on weeks nothing moved.  There was a little drama because although I tested the tape last year and noted it sounded great start to finish, I noticed upon pulling the tape that the foil had detached from the tape.  Fortunately, Kate's Track Shack in Arlington, TX will pro-refurbish for a reasonable price and drop ship tapes and the buyer agreed to the delay, so I didn't lose the sale.  With 8-tracks having a 25% fail rate, this is a massive help for resale at the high end.   They don't usually fall apart after testing, but it happens.  Those 40–50-year-old foils can break any time and the pads can often become brittle and fall out, especially with tapes on the earlier side of 1975.

I had this album on vinyl in good shape used bought in the early 80's and my favorite Queen song, the opening track "Brighton Rock" is on here.  This one also has some other rockers like "Now I'm Here" and "Stone Cold Crazy" that are among the best of the bands catalog.  Of course there is the mega-hit "Killer Queen."  The rest of the album isn't up to any of that level, but overall, it's still top tier Queen.  All Queen albums are flawed for start-to-finish listening in some way, but for me the top 3 are this, News Of The World and The Game for different reasons.  I never felt the urge to replace any Queen album with a album dedicated compact disc including this one, until the pinchpoint editor was raving about the joys of playing the box set which I broke down and bought sometime in the naughty aughties realizing it had been roughly 20-25 years since I had listened to ANY Queen album start to finish and was ready to reinvestigate the prime catalog from the first album through The Game where the box stopped.

Generally, the reinvestigation didn't bring up many unacknowledged gems.  For this album, "Flick of the Wrist" seems the "best of the rest" but it also sounds like a familiar track to me at this point. The grand finale reprise of "In The Lap Of The Gods" has it's outro charms. "Tenement Funster" has a glam rock feel that seems of its era.

Freddie's got a "way" with the girls on his block.