Paul McCartney has put to rest any lingering questions about whether Michael Jackson bequeathed to Macca his rights to songs by The Beatles. The reports began surfacing before Jackson died two weeks ago, but when the King of Pop’s will was released last week it contained no reference to any such transfer.

In a post on his website, McCartney wrote that it was all a case of the media getting it wrong.

“Some time ago, the media came up with the idea that Michael Jackson was going to leave his share in the Beatles songs to me in his will, which was completely made up and something I didn’t believe for a second,” McCartney said in the post. 

“Now the report is that I am devastated to find that he didn’t leave the songs to me. This is completely untrue. I had not thought for one minute that the original report was true and therefore, the report that I’m devastated is also totally false, so don’t believe everything you read folks!”

A January 2009 article in British tabloid The Mirror said that Jackson wanted to leave his share in many of the Beatles songs to McCartney as a peace offering. Of course, the will that keeps the Beatles songs with Jackson’s estate dates from 2002, so even if he had wanted to turn them over to McCartney, he would have had to revise that document, and clearly he did not.

Jackson snapped up the Beatles songs for $47.5 million in 1985 in a purchase of the ATV Music catalog, outbidding McCartney himself. When he died, he owned a 50 percent stake in the catalog with Sony, but his share was heavily leveraged.

McCartney famously called Jackson a “massively talented boy-man” after the King of Pop died at age 50 on June 25. But on his website Macca, who in decades past socialized with Jackson, said that even though he and Jackson “drifted apart over the years,” they “never really fell out” and that he still has fond memories of his old friend and duet partner.