Sorry for the confusion. From reading your post I'm thinking you may have the Audio Chord Wizard activated (on).

At the time I open an audio file, I do not have the ACW selected.

On my system, if the ACW has been selected I received the same three options as you; Cut/Copy/Paste

If I deselect the ACW (set to None), Rt clicking anywhere within the Audio Editor screen I have those three options and a fourth option to set the cursor position as Bar 1.

If the Marker Mode Button is deselected, the button reads Marker Mode (none) and the Add/Delete Bar and Analyze buttons are not visible.

I'm pretty sure it is not necessary to manually set bar 1 as I do and with the Marker Mode Button set to the ACW, the ACW should calculate the beats but I've found setting Bar 1 manually first makes syncing the beats to the audio file easier for me. I'm not saying I'm right but just sharing my process with you guys hoping it may help.

"It is fully accepted that back in the day, artists did not always perform to a metronome, resulting in some pulling/pushing through the song, but not drastically."

You are correct but you may find that after syncing beats with the ACW, the Chord Analysis is much more accurate by equalizing the tempo. That's been true for my ACW analysis's.

BIAB Ultra Pak+ 2024:RB 2024, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.