I've always been a huge James Taylor fan and over the years I've taught myself many of his songs by ear, gradually getting to recognize familiar chord patterns from song to song. I was very concerned to get it as "right" as I coudl, but later, when I was able to see him on dvds or now, Youtube, I saw that although I was close there were always slight differences with what I was doing. This used to get me frustrated but I've now learned that what I'm comfortable with is OK. If I do later "hear" a more complex chord in some certain spot, I'll adopt it though, because that's what makes his songs so great. JT himself, in the covers he did, took liberties with the originals and, in my mind, usually improved on them vastly. If he can do it, so can you.
Lately I've viewed videos of Paul Simon's American Tune and Stookey's Wedding Song and noticed that what all these years I thought was right on (hadn't listened to the originals in a long time) they were playing quite differently - different chords perhaps, and different tempos. But after thinking about it, I decided I liked mine just as much!
If you can find the essence of the song that the author created, then there are all sorts of things you can do to make it your own. If you're playing solo and the original piece was for a full band, you have to be even more inventive anyway. And I'll bet the people you play for won't even notice any differences either.
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