Being a member of a long-standing band, the choice to create solo music outside of that band presents both advantages and disadvantages. Perspectives on this matter vary widely.

“If you’ve been in a band for 40 years, I think you should be doing a lot of work on your own, as well,” Mick Jagger stated to NPR in 2007, the same year he released a compilation of his solo work titled The Very Best of Mick Jagger. “You gain a certain amount of freedom when you do a solo record that you don’t really have when you’re in a band.”

Conversely, Jagger’s songwriting partner in the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards, has always had a different view on stepping away from his primary group.

“It’s kind of strange because it was never in the cards for me,” he shared with Rolling Stone in 1988, discussing the release of his debut solo album, Talk Is Cheap. “It wasn’t something I wanted to do. Also, in the back of my mind, creating a solo record felt like a slight sense of failure. The only reason I would make a solo album is if I couldn’t keep the Stones together.”

Despite this, the Stones remained intact after that point, and both Jagger and Richards have continued to produce solo music. In the gallery below, we present what we consider to be the strongest and weakest releases from each core member of the Rolling Stones, both past and present: Jagger, Richards, Charlie Watts, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, Ronnie Wood, and Mick Taylor.