I've recently been noticing a decline in my ability to learn new songs from Tab or video, so I've decided to try a new approach (well, for me it's new, but all the famous guitarists did it back when they were my age): Learning by ear! I've read that it has a bunch of advantages to it, from the sort of obvious (ear training while expanding my repertoire), to the less obvious (it'll apparently make it easier to learn songs and improve my own songwriting). There is just one problem with this. I have no idea which songs would be great to start with, when my ears are still quite underdeveloped.

I read that it's best to start with a simple song that I like, and work my way up to harder stuff, but most of the stuff I like already sounds pretty difficult. The way I see it, this causes a bit of a problem, so I'd like to know if there are any easy 70's or 80's songs that would be a good exercise in learning to play by ear. I'd appreciate some suggestions for simple songs to start with learning by ear. Preferably some 70's or 80's stuff, if at all possible.