You’re The One That I Want (Grease) Guitar Lesson with Backing Tracks + TAB

In this guitar lesson, we look at TAB for all sections, custom-made to work for the sole guitarist in a working band, practise with the Backing Tracks!

You’re The One That I Want | TAB

This is my favourite bass tune of all time, and when you play it live, the audience’s focus will almost certainly be on the bass and vocals. Even so, we still need to spend time crafting a well-considered guitar part — despite the spotlight clearly being on other areas of the stage.

Let’s begin with the intro. Rather than transcribing the original guitar note for note, we’ll focus on a concept that can be developed and adapted.

Intro

I’ve got two ideas for you here. Bear with me — and try to make this feel more country than disco.

The first idea uses no mutes, so make sure it’s played as cleanly as possible:

You're The One That I Want TAB, intro idea 1.

The second concept is identical, but with two added mutes. Once you can play each version confidently — and switch between them with control — see if you can find more opportunities to introduce mutes of your own:

You're The One That I Want TAB, intro idea 2.

Verse

The verse maintains the same concept as the intro: country-style picking (not disco!). Let’s start by taking one idea and applying it across all the chords:

From here, you can add mutes if you like, or move on to this much more adventurous part:

You're The One That I Want TAB, verse idea 2.

There’s a huge amount of room for experimentation here. You could move this idea to a different area of the neck, add mutes, or even change the picking pattern entirely.

If you do change it — write it down.

The more groundwork you put in, the better everything will sound when you eventually let go and start improvising the intro, instrumental sections, and verses.

Bridge

For the bridge, I’ve taken the backing vocal rhythm and applied it directly to the chords:

Let’s develop this by adding a rhythm at the end of the phrase — it’ll make the part feel snappier:

You're The One That I Want TAB, bridge idea 2.

Now let’s push it further, adding more rhythm on the final beat — and varying it:

You're The One That I Want TAB, bridge idea 3.

Chorus

For the chorus, I decided to create one varied part rather than building it up gradually, as we did with the bridge:

For fun, I also worked out a way to incorporate the backing vocals again. I wouldn’t use this more than a couple of times during the song:

Once you’ve absorbed this TAB and started to feel confident varying, developing, and ultimately improvising with it,play along with the + Backing Tracks.

You’re The One That I Want Backing Tracks + TAB | Related Pages

You’re The One That I Want | Chords + Lyrics

You're The One That I Want chords lesson.

You can learn You’re The One That I Want from Grease using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, and the original recording.

| Am | Am |
I got chills, they’re multiplyin’…

Five similar tunes | Chords + Lyrics