Peter Gabriel tops this list, along with Paul Simon if S&G counts as a band. Those are the only two who make my all-time favorites list.
McCartney, Lennon and Harrison all had some good solo work. I like Townshend’s first couple of solo albums a lot–better than I like any The Who albums, actually. Don Henley, Sting, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks all had one or two good solo albums. So did Phil Collins and David Gilmour, but both of them were still with their respective bands at the time. Joe Walsh had a great solo album but it was before he joined the Eagles. Neil Young, if you think he was with CSN long enough to count.
I thought Bruce Dickinson’s solo material was really, really good. Some records being better than anything Iron Maiden has done since Seventh Son, with The Chemical Wedding being the second best Heavy Metal album of the 90’s IMO. Judas Priest’s Painkiller is the best one of the 90’s, obviously.
And speaking of Priest, Halford’s first solo album, Resurrection is fan-effin’-tastic.
I’ve always though that Garcia was a really good, tastefull guitarist, but I just couldn’t get with the vibe of the Grateful Dead. Based on your last sentence, I think I’ll check some of his solo stuff out.
If you do decide to give the Jerry Garcia Band a listen, make sure to get one of their many live concert recordings, not a studio album. The JGB, like the Grateful Dead, was all about live performance, and the studio stuff is not nearly as engaging as his live shows were…
I liked all of Ace Frehley’s solo stuff. Man, I know I’m on a Kiss kick lately, but I’m expecting the Sonic Boom CD any day now, and I’m actually excited!
Robert Plant. Being the singer of “the greatest rock’n’roll band ever”, and more or less throwing it out the window, doing his own things since the eighties is cool. The music he is making, however, is rather more than cool. He is great, truly awsome.