When Sgt. Pepper came out, he was in rehab at the Priory, though he checked out for a day to throw a release party. He died two months later from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. Not a suicide, because it wasn’t one big dose; he took too many over the course of three days, evidently losing track of how many he’d already swallowed. He was bored during a long weekend when the band was out of town and he had no ability to amuse or control himself. “Unconscious self-overdosage” was the coroner’s verdict. He was only thirty-two.
