Agree with you on everything but the "fuck tempo" part. Tempo is so important! Sticking to my guns on this one. I've had to scrap almost really good projects before because they were exactly the wrong tempo and I'd recorded too many tracks already and the prospect of beat correcting or manually shifting everything made me want to claw my eyes out. Then again. Usually if you just play the damn thing naturally, it presents itself in the best possible tempo. So maybe play it and then divine the tempo later? Possibly what you were saying, I guess. But TEMPO IS IMPORTANT!
Ahhh - but tempo as a part of the recording process? Completely irrelevant. 1) Record piece 2) Record stuff that goes with it 3) arrange, discover that you're nowhere near any sort of reasonable tempo 4A) Adjust the tempo map to fit your drunken playing 4B) timestretch your playing to match a reasonable tempo map 4C) get the arrangement right then re-record your drunken tempo part so that it's no longer drunken 4D) Any and all of the above
Only ever make it to 4C, then look at the profusion of noodles I threw on top of original drunken line, imagine having to re-record them all to fit the tempo map and then spend the rest of the night/life weeping silently in front of video games instead. But I'm willing to grant that not everybody adds about 18 lines too many to every song, and if you're reasonable in your songwriting, this is a totally viable option.