I dont think any of their solo albums was as good as the Beatles as a whole.
Some of my favourite Beatles songs are actually the Harrison ones. (I dont think anyone would admit to liking anything by Ringo, solo or with the band).
Like Harrison, Lennon for me wrote some awesome songs, but he also wrote a hell of a lot of stuff that I just could not get into.
I can listen to, and enjoy, far more McCartney solo stuff (up til the early/mid 80s) than I can enjoy solo Lennon or Harrison stuff.
Harrison and Lennon were probably a lot better "artists" than McCartney, but McCartney definetly was more in tune with what would sell.
If you was to equate it to artists, Lennon and Harrison would be the likes of Van Gogh and DaVinci, where as McCartney would be more like a George Perez or Brian Bolland.
Both styles have their merits, but they will appeal to different groups of people.
This is not to disrespect Lennon, its more a case for the fact that it annoys me that McCartney is often overlooked as being just as creative and talented, but in a different way.
I think its considered hip to like Lennon, but totally uncool to like McCartney!
Me, I got into the Beatles through Lennon's stuff, and only then started appreciating McCartney's stuff (which at first I thought was much too cheesy). I think their common ground was the hard-rocking stuff, like Revolution or Oh Darling.
I think Lennon and Harrison have a couple of really good solo albums, but most of it is boring shit. In Lennon's case, that's mostly due to Yoko's annoying "songs". If you take all the Lennon numbers in Double Fantasy and Milk & Honey, you get a pretty decent album. And, well, I actually like some of Ringo's early cover albums. They're like the complete opposite of Lennon's worst albums: completely unpretentious, easy-going pop-rock numbers.
McCartney, on the other hand, has like 10 or so great albums. Even a couple of the recent ones are good. I think once they're all long dead people are gonna start appreciating the extent of his contribution to rock and pop.
