Learning covers and guitar in the internet age.

being from the "old school" of learning, I, too, learned to play by ear or having someone show you how they played a song. then came these books that had the songs in them with chords above the words. they came in so handy in learning to play a song. those helped, but you had to put some feeling into your playing. I can't read music either, but these songbooks helped a lot however, I have used the videos from time to time. another alternative I use is writing my own songs. then I still put the chords above the words in the song.

I used to be able to read 45 years ago but once I started playing in bands, I started learning by ear. Like John, I adlib my solos. I start the solos like the original but after the first few notes, I use artistic impression to add my own sound to it. Nowadays, we use the internet to get lyrics and chords and we use that as a base for learning the song.

When I took up the guitar at 13, I taught myself to read sheet music. It wasn't long before I realized how little value it was to me because there weren't many songs that they were sheet music for, at least for rock and roll. Most popular music that I found was in "fake books" which showed chords but no solos.....Great for rhythm guitar and for lyrics, but not much else. I ended up learning most stuff playing by ear, which served me well for many years. When I learned about tab, it sounded great in theory, but painfully slow and awkward in practice, so I've never pursued it. I find that, as a bass player, there are some valuable insights to be had in watching online lessons. I played in a band that did a lot of Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan music, and the video tutorials were helpful for that. I often reflect on how much easier it is for novice players today to just be able to learn from videos. When I was starting out, I spent about ten years learning to play lead guitar, and none of it came easy. But, there was a great deal of self-satisfaction in learning something and knowing it was all me, and not just parroting somebody else's knowledge.

Exactly.  I had someone respond on a Facebook groups, to the Parchman Farm video I did.  He just said 'Speedy'.  I asked him what he meant and he said it was faster than the 'original version'.  I just laughed

I sometimes do things  little differently simply because I'm playing a different guitar.

Much of my playing with others has either involved chord charts or learning it beforehand--(however you like to learn it)
Or someone else shows the other what to play--that happened a lot in my more frequent jamming days.
Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

I hated it when someone would say--"Watch me" but make it impossible to see what they're doing.

The problem is (and this is not meant to sound academic) many guitar players simply learn their songs in reference points on the neck and patterns. They aren't really thinking in keys and sometimes they are playing what they hear but not what's being played.

I love fake books!

Great song, Sultans of Swing

Great sound on that song to be sure

Of course I like to mess with songs when covering them.
Lost of fun that way--speed them up, slow them down, different rhythms, mess with the arrangements, power chords instead of jazz chords, or play mor complicated chords instead of power chords, etc, etc etc.

Sure-or 6/8 or whatever to give it a different feel.
Certainly.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't--but it's fun to try.

And you might just learn something.

Or do stuff like this:

Combining songs is pretty cool. My son figured out that the chords for Walking My Baby Back Home fit exactly over They Can't Take That Away From Me. So when we play that song with the band, both melodies are being played simultaneously