I understand your relinquishing playing with the band in order to learn the songs but, if you are intending to play with a band at some point in time, I think it is critical to get used to the slight variations that occur in a band setting (timing and notes) and follow the visual/aural clues that tell you where everyone is going.

I assume that if you were playing in a cover band, the entire band would be expected to practice until the entire piece was fairly identical to the way the original band played it or, if you were a pro band on tour, playing the same 18 songs every night for a year, you'd pretty much have the mechanics down. The bands I play in are neither and we have to be able to subtly adapt to have the outcome sound good to the audience. Most of the time they don't realize we did it a bit different, but if we weren't able to do "different" together, it'd be a disaster.

Learn to play it, then certainly give learning to play it with the band another try.