Your ears are the most important tools you have as a guitar player and musician. I'd recommend anyone learning any instrument to learn by ear rather than use tabs.
Unfortunately if the songs you like are a bit too hard for you to learn by ear you have to find out what level your ears are at. You could start with some old blues songs and just try to strum along with the chord changes.
Then as you progress move on to something like Neil Young or Bob Dylan that has really great but fairly common progressions. Try to just figure out the chord changes at first and then if there is a specific part or lick, sit down and try to figure that out next.
This can be a very tedious and patience testing process. Unfortunately there are no shortcuts other than keeping at it and practicing over and over again.