When Big Star frontman and wallflower hero Alex Chilton died suddenly of a heart attack last month, the news hit hard. After all, Chilton was only 59. Now we're getting more details about Chilton's death that makes the whole thing even more devastating: it might've been averted if Chilton had health insurance.

As Consequence of Sound points out, a recent New Orleans Times-Picayune feature covers Chilton's life since the early '80s, which he spent living in New Orleans. For the most part, it's a fascinating story of someone who willfully withdrew from public life, working only when he had to make a little money for himself. But near the end of the profile, there's a bit about health problems that Chilton never had treated.

Times-Picayune writer Keith Spera writes, "At least twice in the week before his fatal heart attack, Chilton experienced shortness of breath and chills while cutting grass. But he did not seek medical attention, [wife Laura] Kersting said, in part because he had no health insurance."

It's impossible to say if things would've gone differently if Chilton had sought that medical attention, but this is a sad, sad story any way you look at it.