Paul McCartney on M.J.: "We Kind of Drifted Apart"

UNITED STATED. Paul McCartney is setting the record straight about yesterday—at least, that is, his friendship with the late Michael Jackson.

The ex-Beatle dropped into last night's episode of The Late Show With David Letterman and explained that the former pals "fell apart" after the King of Pop snatched the Fab Four's catalog out from under him in a 1985 auction.

Jackson and McCartney, of course, teamed up for memorable duets on "The Girl Is Mine" off the former's Thriller album and "Say Say Say" off the latter's Tug of War.

So it stung something pretty when the Moonwalker paid $47.5 million to outbid him for the moptops' tunes and then subsequently sold the catalog a few years later to Sony for $95 million. And adding insult to injury, before the sale, McCartney was also the one to give Jackson a crash course on the value of an artist owning music publishing rights.

According to McCartney, the "Beat It" singer coolly informed him, "That's just business, Paul."

"We've never kind of got to it, and I thought 'hmmm,' so we kind of drifted apart," the 66-year-old music legend told Letterman, but then added that "there was no big bustup."

He then said Jackson "was a lovely man, massively talented, and we miss him."

McCartney, in town for his first-ever gig at New York's new Citi Field (after giving the Mets' now-defunct Shea Stadium a fine send-off last year) to support the release of his latest disc, Electric Arguments, also reminisced about getting back to the Ed Sullivan Theater where 45 years earlier the Beatles made their American television debut to launch the so-called British Invasion.

"The memory of being here...it's great. It was kind of scary the first time," he said.

Recalling the Beatles' famous final performance, McCartney then played a surprise free miniconcert atop the theater's marquee, regaling New Yorkers with a cut off the new album along with the Wings-era gem "Band on the Run," and a trio of classics from that other little band of his, "Get Back," "Helter Skelter" and "Back in the U.S.S.R."