I look at a band’s great song rate over their entire catalog . Both these groups are similar in the 10 -15% great range, but the Stones have a more extensive collection. Slight advantage to the Stones. Very subjective obviously.
Exile and then Some Girls were the last “great” Stones albums, everything outside of that since 1972 has mostly been hit or miss.
I’ll put The Who’s output from 68 to 73, up with anything. That includes a lot of the songs that didn’t even make it onto the albums.
Pete did seem to lose interest in The Who after Quadrophenia.
But the Stones never did a rock opera.
I dunno. Every song on “Tommy” works as it was supposed to work. They’re not all fist-pumping rock songs: You can’t put it on auto-shuffle for a party, because “Uncle Ernie” might come on and convince every last soul that you’re a dangerous, perverted freak. But they wanted creepy, they got creepy.
I don’t know of a Rolling Stones album where more than two or three songs are really worth having... but then again, every time I tried to listen through an entire album of theirs, I couldn’t finish it, and I gave up trying before I finished their collection.
Now, honest truth: I was a kid in the late 70s/early 80s, when Rolling Stones songs weren’t just meh, but were God-awful terrible. God help me, I don’t say this lightly, but I would rather hear Nickelback’s Photograph a hundred times than listen to Miss You once. They also took forever to write their first good song (yes, Satisfaction), But I did go through a phase, much to old, when I was hearing all their late 60s music and saying “OK, THIS is a really, really good song”, “OK, Now THIS is a really, really, really good song.”