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John Henry Timmis IV was born in 1961 in Warren, Pennsylvania, and spent part of his childhood in Athens, Ohio, where his father taught at Ohio University. Timmis described his home life there as an abusive one, with his parents separating and his mother bringing him to Chicago. He ran away several times before his mother committed him to the Menninger Clinic in 1976-purportedly because she thought he might be schizophrenic. After leaving the clinic, Timmis pursued his greatest passion: music. He liked to see himself as a legendary figure, but struggled mightily to build up the courage to play even in front of friends, so he often videotaped himself singing along to his own songs, or hired musicians to play with him while he filmed homemade concert movies. Timmis battled substance abuse, anorexia, and bulimia before eventually dying from complications of alcoholism in 2002 at the age of 40.
