Hey Jim - as always, thanks for the compliments and of course your great ideas!

Re: Ian Hunter/Mott The Hoople -- yes please!! If you can help me out - go ahead and pick a few of his classic tunes to leave on the Song Request Forum - hopefully GT HQ can get enough interest to clear them for teaching!

As for a course aimed at deconstructing songs - yes that would put me out of a job - haha!!

All kidding aside, the skills I use most when learning and deconstructing these classic tunes are the years of experience under my belt and the ear training that comes with it!! It comes from having learned hundreds and hundreds of songs on my own and connecting what I've extracted with a basic understanding of music theory. I use every available resource I can to learn as much about the song as possible - official (and unofficial) transcriptions, youtube videos - either live performances or instructional videos, computer audio programs that help to isolate instruments in a mix, and, in the end, my ear. All of these combine to allow me to ideally give an accurate breakdown of everything going on guitar-wise.

That said - you've piqued my interest and I think GT could benefit from a tutorial that gives some direction and tips for students to learn songs on their own. Let me pitch it to the powers at be and see what they say. I'll keep you posted!

Mike