Les meilleurs albums solos des membres des Beatles selon... Ultimate Classic Rock

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Asked what he thought of his monumental Spector-ized debut during a remastering session years later, Harrison simply said, "Too much echo." By then an American publishing company had won a $600,000 judgment after claiming that the chart-topping "My Sweet Lord" sounded too much like the early '60s hit "He's So Fine." Still, nothing could mask the creative triumph that is All Things Must Pass, as George Harrison fully emerged from the long shadow of Lennon and McCartney. If he never did another solo thing, his legend would have already been secured.

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Lennon's disillusionment with a decade, a band and a youth now being left behind erupted in a scalding series of songs. Lennon didn't simply take parting shots. He lashed out, tearing to shreds everything in which he once placed his faith. It was often painful to hear, but Lennon's confrontations with his demons and heroes continue to resonate with anyone who's ever struggled with the same emotions – and his tough backing group matches him punch for punch.

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In an enduring triumph, McCartney skillfully weaves his desire to break free of the Beatles with an age-old outsiders mythology. This restlessness, a sense of destiny unfulfilled, pushed McCartney to new creative places – and he uses every tool in his pop-music shed on the LP. No McCartney album has held together so well, and none showcases his many strengths so successfully.

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Ram keeps rising in estimation, particularly with fans who now recognize it as an overlooked precursor to the handmade-pop era. Fascinatingly unedited and utterly misjudged in its time, this album never sits still for long. It also rarely stumbles. McCartney was bursting with post-Beatles ideas, and they give Ram dizzying momentum.

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In the decades since the arrival of this project, most of its legacy has telescoped around the title track. But there was more to this than "Imagine." Lennon asked probing questions on "How?" and "Gimme Some Truth." He offered grinding rock on "It's So Hard," and delicate admissions on "Oh My Love." The jaunty "Crippled Inside" belied its heartfelt lyric, while "How Do You Sleep" delivered a sharp jab at Paul McCartney. Then there was "Jealous Guy." An instance of nearly unmatched fragility, it's become one of the most covered of Lennon's solo tracks.

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A typically winking McCartney made his most serious and most unfussy LP ever with Chaos and Creation. That consistency in tone and quality might lead to distraction for those enamored with his more obvious quirks. But Chaos only grows into a richer experience with subsequent listens. The result is not only a modern-period success, it's one of McCartney's very best albums of any era.

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After the Beatles split, Harrison made a stirring case for his own emerging skills as a songwriter and performing artist. He started by topping both the U.S. and U.K. charts with 1970's All Things Must Pass, then returned with this similarly impressive – though sometimes a touch too similar – album, which had an impish original working title of The Magic Is Here Again.

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One of McCartney's most complete albums ever, Flaming Pie was informed but not shackled by his return to all things Beatles while working on the Anthology project. Something clearly sparked, as McCartney deftly reanimates his entire legacy of layered pop, touchingly personal folk and loose-limbed rock. Best of all, he brought along a memorably enduring set of songs.

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Starr, the ultimate glue guy, orchestrated the closest thing we ever got to a Beatles reunion – and together they created his bestselling album. Home to a pair of chart-topping songs, Ringo featured game contributions from his old pals George ("Photograph," "You and Me [Babe]"), John (the superlative "I'm the Greatest") and Paul ("Six O'Clock"), completed with a cover that brought to mind their classic collaboration Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

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This organic, home-recorded aside sounds like what it is: someone trying to work out his own sound. And that's its enduring magic. McCartney emerged from one of rock's biggest bands a little unsure of things. He occasionally sounds like a reasonable facsimile of his hitmaking self (“Maybe I’m Amazed,” “Every Night”), but more often he's reaching for other parts of his muse.

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Sessions for this surprisingly effective look back took more than a year, as Lennon struggled with personal issues, legal stuff and producer Phil Spector. (At one point, Spector swiped the tapes. At another, bootlegs of the early takes began popping up everywhere. It all started, of course, with a lawsuit.) Lennon ended up completing Walls and Bridges in the meantime, but that album can only aspire to this one's consistent passion. The arrangements are very much time specific, but Lennon has rarely sung with more energy and wit.

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Returning to action with Jeff Lynne could have – heck, maybe should have – turned into a empty genre exercise. Instead, Cloud Nine played to every one of Harrison's strengths. The chart-topping cover of "Got My Mind Set on You" reanimated his early influences. "That's What It Takes" sounded like the completely realized mid-'70s hit he never quite managed. Harrison even came to terms with the Beatles on "When We Was Fab," a tune that – even then – had this sense of bittersweet reverie.

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McCartney set out to make a more raw-boned record, and he largely succeeded, putting a bright charge into his sound after the soft-rock fluff of London Town. Ultimately, however, he tries to have it both ways; the second side features a retrenchment into some of McCartney's more recognizable indulgences. Still, Back to the Egg is better than it's given credit for.

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Somehow even more scattered than Mind Games, Walls and Bridges can't decide whether it wants to be a party record ("What You Got," "Surprise, Surprise [Sweet Bird of Paradox]"), a dark confessional moment ("Scared," "Nobody Loves You [When You're Down and Out]"), a throwback ("Ya Ya") or something in between. It ends up being all of those things, and none of them. Along the way, however, Lennon sprinkles in some of his very best solo efforts with "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night," "Old Dirt Road," "#9 Dream" and "Bless You".

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When producer Jeff Lynne decided to finish this project after Harrison's death, you had to wonder what would become of it. After all, the Electric Light Orchestra frontman — perhaps even more so than Harrison — was prone to unsuccessfully ornate albums. What happened was one of the best records Harrison ever issued.

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This album has likewise only gotten better with time. What once felt like pastiche now seems like a terrific blending of elements from the breadth of McCartney's varied career, as Memory Almost Full succeeded at creating the broad statement of purpose he'd clearly hoped Driving Rain would be. At the same time, "The End of the End" made clear the more troubling themes at play, as McCartney's then-recent divorce seemed to send him into deeply contemplative territory.

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An adult-contemporary-ish project that can be too slickly mid-tempo, and somehow includes yet another needless update of a Beatles cut ("Here Comes the Moon"). Still, George Harrison often rises above all of that. "Your Love Is Forever" is one of his most enduring ballads and "Blow Away," a soul-lifting track about clearing skies and opening hearts, has aged as well as any '70s-era solo Beatle single. Maybe better.

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It's been easy, over the decades, to mythologize this project. After all, we now know the fate that awaited him, and that changed everything about the way Double Fantasy was received. In truth, this album was a potentially exciting, yet still determinedly tentative, step back. With its comfy domesticity and too-slick, of-its-moment production, Double Fantasy still doesn't feel dangerous enough to be a top-tier John Lennon record.

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The album's title was a take off on the RPMs for old vinyl and Harrison's age on the proposed release date — though the record didn't actually arrive until his 33 & 2/3 birthday. That mishap aside, Harrison is back in good humor again, and the often-overlooked Thirty Three & 1/3 is better for it. He scored an impish Top 20 hit with "Crackerbox Palace," sent up that whole Chiffons mess on "This Song," and rounded things out with several R&B-stoked successes.

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This album opened the door for Lennon’s so-called Lost Weekend, and Mind Games can sound just as in flux as his private life had become. Its highlights (including the Top 20 hit title song) are pretty high, however. "Out the Blue," a tale of once-devoted lovers now apart, speaks to his sorrow in a touchingly direct way. Elsewhere, Lennon largely avoids the strident missteps of the preceding Sometime in New York City with flinty rockers like "Meat City," the deeply underrated "I Know" and his utterly broken "Aisumasen (I'm Sorry)".

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It seemed the spell of '80s disappointments could only be broken with an edgy outside voice, a new collaborator in the vein of John Lennon. McCartney found that person in Elvis Costello, who helped him return to the charts – and, more importantly, return to his former ambitions. The production on Flowers in the Dirt is sometimes inextricably of its time, but the McCartney of old is back.

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Like most sequels, this one fell a bit short. Starr again worked with sturdy producer Richard Perry, and again with an impressive galaxy of guest performers – including Elton John, Steve Cropper, Dr. John, Billy Preston and John Lennon. The issue on this more inconsistent follow-up might have been who wasn't there: the other Beatles, in particular since the always-sympathetic George Harrison had helped craft a No. 1 single ("Photograph") for 1973's Ringo.

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A stabilized Wings – they eventually featured the same lineup on consecutive studio albums for the first (and only) time – synced up with an already-cozy family life to shower everything in a warm, inviting glow. Sometimes, that means McCartney gets a bit too cute. But his genius, at least when he wasn't handing the mic over to his fellow Wings, consistently shines through.

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Despite being holed up in Abbey Road (site of so many brilliant Beatles recordings) and with Chris Thomas (who co-produced Back to the Egg, the 1979 finale of his subsequent band Wings), Paul McCartney went about things here in an older old-fashioned way. That meant none of his tried-and-true studio-craftsmanship. Instead, this was fast and loose, though (again) primarily dotted with cover songs. The originals nose it ahead of his other nostalgic turns.

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The biting "I Don't Wanna Face It" begins with the smeared sound of a tape machine engaging; it's another powerful reminder that Milk and Honey includes the incomplete, now-posthumous recordings a murdered genius. The whole thing is like that, only half varnished, unrepentant and very real. In this way, Milk and Honey might be the perfect ending for Lennon. After all, he once put out a series of albums called Unfinished Music.

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In a reflection of the stormy atmosphere then surrounding the disintegrating Wings, Red Rose Speedway is another half-measure success, best known for the sappy hit "My Love." Dig deeper, however, and McCartney is often working at full strength. If nothing else, it steeled him for his greatest post-Beatles success inside a lean three-person format.

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Overpraised at the time by a fan base still reeling from the murder of John Lennon, Tug of War can now be seen as a noble failure. McCartney ditches Wings in favor of a kitchen-sink approach to music-making, and that new freedom leads to a decidedly unfocused outcome. At its best, Tug of War shimmers. But for every "Take It Away," there's an "Ebony and Ivory." The whole album is like that.

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McCartney splits the difference between nostalgia and looking forward, checking in with his spunkiest, horniest and most biting album in years. It goes on a little too long, and some tracks fall into the forgettable modern pop that's weighed down McCartney records for more than three decades. But there's a renewed sense of energy and purpose – and "I Don't Know" is one of his very best modern-era songs.

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Unlike his standards-focused solo debut, Starr's sophomore genre record didn't come as such a surprise. After all, Beaucoups of Blues harkened back to Beatles-era covers like Buck Owens' "Act Naturally" and Starr's own rootsy "Don't Pass Me By." There's an innate sadness in Starr's voice which seems perfectly suited to this kind of music, and he completely inhabits the songs here.

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There are times when this LP can be admittedly insufferable. The single "Biker Like an Icon," in what had become a theme, is in no way representative. The album's also includes a few largely forgettable bromides. But McCartney keeps saving himself with some of his best-constructed modern pop songs, and a final pair of flinty Elvis Costello collaborations. That's almost enough to make up for the rest.