My best friend is in a tribute band to Neil Young called Young At Heart. They're based in Des Moines, Iowa, so I haven't heard a chance to hear them, though I know my friend is a good guitar player. He says the pieces jell and that they have good singers.
I've never played in a band paying tribute to one artist or band, although of course I've played covers of different people's songs. We learned the material and the signature riffs, but never tried to copy the original version slavishly. Sometimes we COULDN'T, because of the instrumentation or the keys our singers were comfortable singing in.
In fact, I used to think of cover bands as untalented hacks - "where's the creativity?" until I made friends in a cover band who did excellent versions of the songs, as close as possible. Made me rethink things, although I prefer to have the freedom to explore different versions. For example, I wouldn't mind doing Neil Young's "Down by the River" and maybe copy the original phrase from his guitar solo - sort of signature to the song - but certainly not his whole solo. In my hubris and shameless arrogance, I feel I could do a BETTER ONE, LOL; though of course that's a matter of opinion.
Not that I'm as good as Roy Buchanan was, but Roy played much better solos than Neil on Down By The River, and still kept the feeling of the song.
But I do think that if the original arrangement was really well crafted, or a guitar solo really memorable, it might be better to do that version than just some sloppy hack work version.