‘I Don’t Want to Die Without Knowing Love’ — Jackson’s Phone Call Resurfaces as ‘Michael’ Breaks Box Office Records

photo: courtesy

By Stacy M. Brown

The box office says one thing. A resurfaced private call from Michael Jackson at 34 years old that’s trending on social media is saying something else.

As “Michael” keeps pulling in massive numbers worldwide — more than $217 million globally, including a $97 million U.S. debut — fans aren’t just watching. They’re showing up in fedoras, sequined jackets, and single gloves, singing, dancing, and shouting at the screen. In cities across the country and overseas, theaters have turned into something closer to live shows than movie screenings.

The film has already set records, including the biggest opening weekend ever for a musical biopic worldwide and the biggest domestic debut for any biopic period. Audiences have pushed the film’s approval into the high 90 percent range, even as critics remain split. By Tuesday, it was still piling on, adding $11.1 million in a single day — one of the strongest April weekday totals on record.

That’s the movie.

This call is the man.

In the recording, Jackson is talking to an unidentified woman. He’s 34. He’s already arguably the most famous person on the planet. And he keeps coming back to one thing.

“She’s like, I’m really worried about you. I just want to be with you, you know, one-to-one, without the whole gang being around and, you know,” Jackson says. “I just, it’s important for me to be with you. I don’t care. And I really want to be with you.”

“So, what are you going to do?” the unidentified woman on the other end of the call asks.

“Well, I’m going to, I’m going to be with you,” Jackson says.

Then he lays it out.

“Tell me before you make love,” Jackson says. “Because I don’t love those people. I want to be with them. I want to know what a relationship is all about before I die. I’ve never had, I mean, I’ve been with Kate, I’ve been with Kate, I thought I was with Diana. It was just in my own mind.”

“You were a little boy,” the woman says.

“I know,” Jackson says. “I’ve never had a relationship. My brothers have been married. My brothers have had girlfriends. I really haven’t had that.”

She presses him again, even bringing up where he is in life.

“Um, how long, I mean, how long did it take you to get over Diana?” she asks.

“Years. A hell of a long time,” Jackson says.

He doesn’t move off the point.

“I just want to know what it’s like to have a real relationship with someone who doesn’t want me for me,” Jackson says. “That I don’t, I don’t have to look over my shoulder all the time.”

“That doesn’t have an ulterior motive?” she asks.

“Yes,” Jackson says. “That doesn’t question me, that what am I going to do? I don’t want to die without knowing about having a real relationship with a woman for me.”

Years before this call, Jackson had already put it in writing.

“I believe I’m one of the loneliest people in the world,” he wrote in his autobiography, Moonwalk.

“Success definitely brings on loneliness. It’s true,” he continued. “People think you’re lucky, that you have everything. They think you can go anywhere and do anything, but that’s not the point. One hungers for the basic stuff.”

Back on the call, he’s still talking about that same “basic stuff.”

“Well, I loved her so much,” Jackson says, speaking about a woman widely believed to be Diana Ross, whose portraying in the blockbuster film was reportedly cut out for legal reasons. “God, I would give her money, I would give her jewelry, I would give her a house, a car, whatever. But we never did that.”

“Well, she wanted all of you, first of all. She wanted, she wanted a relationship,” the woman says.

“I loved her so much, I didn’t want to see that. I did not want to see that,” Jackson says. “And I think she was fooling around. I know for a fact.”

He circles back again.

“I don’t regret that I didn’t sleep with her. I’m glad I didn’t,” Jackson says. “I wanted to change what I haven’t experienced before. Never being a normal, any relationship with someone. I never had one.”

“I think everybody wants one,” she says.

“Well, I haven’t. Okay. And that’s what I want, you know,” Jackson says.

The call stays right there.

“I don’t want to die, not in a happy relationship like everybody else around me does,” Jackson says.

“I don’t want to die,” he says again.

“I know,” she answers.

“Well, I’ve never experienced it. For someone to accept me totally,” Jackson says.

That part — the relationships, the loneliness, the need for something real — is largely outside the timeline of the current film, which focuses on Jackson’s life through 1988.

And that’s where the conversation is starting to go now.

With “Michael” already breaking records, turning theaters into sing-alongs, and pulling in audiences across generations, attention is shifting to what comes next. The story doesn’t end in 1988. The fame gets bigger. The scrutiny gets louder. And, by Jackson’s own words, the search for love doesn’t go away.

Stories that surfaced later add to what’s heard in the call. In her memoir, Priscilla Presley wrote that her daughter and Jackson’s first wife, Lisa Marie Presley, told her Michael was “still a virgin” at 35 when their relationship began.

On this call, at 34, he’s already saying it without saying it.

“I don’t want to die without knowing about having a real relationship with a woman for me,” Jackson says.

All of this adds what could be fodder for the second “Michael” movie. The first film shows the rise. The music. The control. A second chapter — and with these numbers, that conversation is already happening — likely won’t be about records.

It could be about whether he ever found what he kept saying he didn’t have.