A beginner has some room for manoeuvre between Jingle Bells and, say, ACDC solos :-). I started the guitar 6 months ago. In parallel with following the GT lessons, I am learning some songs because it's more fun than lessons alone.

I started with Nirvana's Come as you are (the riff that starts the song), and later on with the introduction of The Cure's A forest. In both cases the rest of the songs appeared to be too complex for me (when it came to switching chords at a too fast pace for me), and I wanted to be able to play a whole song, not just bits here and there, so I chose a song with no chord at all (while practicing the GT's chords lessons in parallel, of course !) : The Cure's Disintegration, which has many cool parts to play (when you like The Cure).

Later on, I worked on Iron Maiden's Brave New World. But even if it's relatively simple for an Iron Maiden song, I had to simplify a few things. For instance, the chorus is based on 3 power chords quite easy to play, except that between each chord there is a string played twice (not easy to explain without showing a tab, sorry), which is way too fast to play for me ! So I just play the chords : if the result is not as awesome as the original, it sounds ok anyway, and it is still some work for a beginner to move the chords correctly all along the next ! Another advantage of a band with 3 guitars is that you can pick the parts that are the most convenient for your current skills :-)

Hope it can help...