I grew up wearing holes in the records trying to work out the chords. Then, when the internet came along I discovered "other peoples transcriptions" and that saved some time and effort. Now I use acw in conjunction with a very cheap tool called "chords" that will recognised the basic chords for you while the song is playing in Winamp. I also use this tool when playing live and some bright spark says "can you play American pie" and I have the backing track on my computer. I think this tool only cost about $15 but I find it incredibly useful.

LyricLab – Where words become music https://www.lyriclab.net/