Well a good deal of debate on the solo works of former Beatles, so I had to weigh in.
I noticed someone earlier had posted that Two Virgins, The Wedding Album and Life with the Lions were avante garde crap. Indeed they were.....as were EVERY solo effort by a Beatle prior to the break-up....With one exception: Lennon's Live album in Toronto. Even George's Wonderwall Music was curious. But he more than made amends with All Things Must Pass.
As for Ringo, Rotogravure is passable if for a Dose of Rock & Roll, Hey Baby and Lennon's Cookin. Clapton contributes a song (This be Called a Song), which is okay, but somewhat pedestrian for him. Where Ringo's work turns to crap is with Ringo the 4th, Bad Boy and yes, Stop and Smell the Roses. With the latter, he made a valiant attempt with Paul McCartney's help to rejuvenate the Ringo success, but the album crokes with a couple of notable exceptions (Wrack My Brain, Back off the Boogaloo reissued, and Private Property to a certain extent). The Wrack My Brain video was much heralded on MTV at the time.
Ringo then put out a decent album with Joe Walsh's help, titled, Old Wave. But regrettably, it was only issued in Canada. Arguably, the music there was Beatlesque to certain degree -- and just good old rock and roll by two solid veterans. Yet, it went unnoticed. Which left Ringo with the Ringo Album as his solid post-Beatles claim to fame until Time Takes Time would emerge in the early 90s. That said, most critics and fans enjoyed Goodnight Vienna (despite Call Me and Husbands & Wives) as more than passable even if it couldn't match the magical prowess Ringo Album. (Remember, Vienna yielded two hits singles -- Only You and the No No Song --, plus called on Elton John's services.) As for Rotogravure, it received good airplay on NYC and LA rock stations upon its release, before ultimately fading to obscurity along with Ringo's creative brilliance for the next 15 years.
As for John's solo work at the time of his death, Double Fantasy was not panned by the critics, as someone here suggested. You can look that up on the web. In fact, just before he died, the album had almost snuck into Billboards To 10. Of course, his assassination propelled it to #1 for a good deal of time. Though the album couldn't match Imagine or the Plastic Ono Band album, its quality was just as good as Mind Games and Walls and Bridges (the latter generating John's only #1 single -- Whatever Gets You Through the Night, that is until Starting Over).
As for Milk and Honey, it was released posthusmously after John's death. In fact, John was still engineering and recording it the night he died. Some critics enjoyed it immensely, largely because of the Imaginesque sound (ala Crippled Inside) of I'm Stepping Out and Borrowed Time, and the Walls and Bridge tones of Nobody Told Me. Other critics dismissed it as being another throwaway along the lines of Some Time in NYC. I'm torn in the middle. To this day, I still cannot listen to the Yoko music on either Milk and Honey or Double Fantasy. But all the John tracks from Fantasy, and at least half of those from Honey are exceptional, even if the latter album was never really completed.
Now Paul has put out a bunch of clunkers -- in fact, the entire decade of the 80s and most of the 90s will not make McCartney's musical memoirs. (Although I do like Flaming Pie for a few reasons -- notably the Lennon and Maureen references, and of course the inclusion of Ringo and Steve Miller on two tracks apiece.) But Paul's work in the 70s stands tall as among rock history's best. Same analysis holds somewhat true for George, for his chart success went up and down after All Things Must Pass. Some of his best work were with his Wilbury friends, but little can match the intellectual genius of All Things Must Pass and of course Brainwashed.
Clunkers and retard music are in the ears of the beholder, as is warmth and receptivity. Taste is taste, and these are just albums.....to paraphrase a famous Ringo quote. As a lifelong Beatle fan, I realize that their body of work has some pratfalls, but taken collectively -- as a band and as four soloists -- few of today's rockers and singers can achieve that kind of depth, chemistry and artistry.