In high school, I immediately bought all the post-Beatles breakup albums by Lennon. After McCartney's first solo album, he began to sound rather sappy, and we all got fully on the Lennon bandwagon. Looking back, Lennon sounds kind of angry on those albums, very good stuff, not exactly great. Though it took me time to figure this out, I believe G Harrison may have been the best post-Beatle. As for Lennon-McCartney, the two seemed to need each other for balance, one the angry poet, the other a sentimental tunesmith. Neither ever achieved the greatness as solos that they did as the Beatles team (similar things could be said about many bands and breakups?) I should add that Yoko really kind of messed Lennon up, she now being a noun denoting the overbearing rock musician g.f. (see "Spinal Tap" for details).