Tim Maia - Personal Life

Personal Life

Tim Maia had two sons: Carmelo Maia (also known as Telmo, b. 1975) with Geisa Gomes da Silva, and José Carlos da Silva Nogueira (1966-2002). He was also the surrogate father of Geisa's other son, Marcio Leonardo "Léo" Maia (b. 1974). Léo was registered by Tim as his son, although he knew that Léo was not his child, since he met his wife Geisa when she was already pregnant. She had been separated from her boyfriend, who refused to recognize Léo as his child. Tim and Geisa started living together but they broke up after a few arguments. When they made up, she was pregnant with Carmelo. Tim registered Carmelo and married her. When Léo Maia was 12, Tim Maia and Geisa divorced.

Maia lived in the United States of America from 1959 to 1963. He first resided Tarrytown, New York, with the family of an acquaintance of Maia's father's costumer. There he learned English and did not speak much Portuguese because so few Brazilians were living in the USA at the time. In 1961 Maia moved to New York City, and in 1963 with a group of three friends decided to travel to Southern United States. With a stolen car and performing small thefts to finance the journey, which rended him five prisons, Maia and friends travelled through nine states before arriving in Florida. In Daytona Beach, Maia had his final imprisonment for marijuana possession, which earned him the deportation back to Brazil.

Tim Maia became a member of the Brazilian Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Brasileiro - PSB) in October 1997. He was rumoured to have joined the party in order to run for a seat in the Federal Senate for Rio de Janeiro in the 1998 general elections, but died before that. When asked by a reporter why he chose to join the then small PSB, he replied: "Brazil is the only country where – in addition to whores cumming, pimps being jealous and drug dealers being addicted – poor people vote for the right-wing". His phrase would become a famous aphorism on the way Brazilians face politics.

Maia had a tradition of arriving late at concerts, or at times missing them altogether. He also frequently complained about the sound quality in them. Many of his missed concerts were due to what he called "triathlon", consuming whiskey, cocaine and marijuana before the gig. In the end of his life, Maia Tim suffered from many health problems which includes diabetes, acute hypertension, obesity and pulmonary embolism. In 1996, he had a Fournier gangrene solved through an emergency operation.