One of rock’s great hypnotic bass lines was improvised in the studio as tape rolled. After Neil Young’s minor-chord guitar intro, bassist Billy Talbot fell in with drummer Ralph Molina’s wanderlust beat. Ten minutes and six seconds later they had “Cowgirl in the Sand.”

The recording became the now-classic closing track on “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” Young’s 1969 album and his first accompanied by the band Crazy Horse.

“I still am trying to figure out how to how I did that,” Talbot says of “Cowgirl in the Sand.” “We started playing it and it had this energy and I just went for it. I play along with that one [now] and I like to be as wild as I can be like I was at that time with that track.

“But at the same time, I don’t want to pin it all down and say this is the bass part. I want to leave it free. So it’s a perplexing situation, but I love being perplexed by something that I did years ago. That’s cool.”

Canadian singer, songwriter and guitarist Young and Los Angeles rockers Crazy Horse were simpatico from go. Along with Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers and Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, Crazy Horse are undeniably one of rock and roll’s best backing bands ever.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse have made 15 albums together, including must-haves like “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” 1975′s “Zuma,” ‘79′s “Rust Never Sleeps” and 1990′s “Ragged Glory.”

From mid ‘90s to early 2010s, Young and Crazy Horse teamed up less frequently for studio releases. But the last five years have been prolific ones for Young and Crazy Horse, with four albums, including two in 2022, “Toast” and most recently “World Record.”

Together, Young and Crazy Horse make music that’s a living thing, similar to how a flame’s alive or how an ocean is. Part of that magic is they record a song as they’re writing it, instead of, as most artists do, after a song’s written.

“We like to get things on the first time we ever play him,” Talbot tells me. “You know, we like to have that energy happen and capture it. Now, sometimes there’s mistakes. But we don’t mind the mistakes if the energy is there. If the energy is there, we’d rather not clean it up, and try to record it just perfectly. We don’t like that. Because you lose the feel. You lose the feel, you’ve lost everything.”

“Chevrolet,” a head-bobbing rocker off “World Record,” is a recent example. “That recording was the first time we played the whole song completely together,” Talbot says. “And it really rocks. Neil’s guitar playing is incredible, and his vocal, you know, the harmonies, the meaning of the song is so cool. And that’s typical. I wouldn’t say anything is typical of Neil Young because I wouldn’t like to call him typical. But that’s the way it is with him.”

Stream of conscious music recording like that could easily go sideways without the kind of steady yet empathetic grooves Talbot and Molina do.

Of his connection with his rhythm section partner, Talbot says, “The best thing that Ralph and I do is not talk to each other about the music. I gotta know the changes and he’s got to know the beat that he feels. I pay attention to what he’s playing, and he pays attention to what I’m playing. And that’s it. But mainly we just pay attention to the song and Neil guiding us with his playing of electric guitar and singing.”

Last week, Neil Young & Crazy Horse released a new live album, titled “Fu##in’ Up.” The nine-song set captures a hot jagged show recorded at Rivoli, a Toronto nightclub with a capacity of only around 240. A band with a big sound like Young and Crazy Horse playing in that small room gives “Fu##in’ Up” extra hair.

The band’s stage volume isn’t as ear-bleeding as one might expect though, Talbot says. “It’s not too loud. We have we have great old tube amps that really help us create the sound. And that was t was a small club, so we didn’t have to be really loud for it to embrace everyone. Embrace the whole crowd with the sound, that’s part of what we do.”

The restless Young — formerly of the band Buffalo Springfield and, later, Crosby, Stills Nash & Young — has also maintained a solo career, releasing key LPs like “After the Gold Rush” and “Harvest.” Sometimes members of Crazy Horse, including late great singer/guitarist Danny Whitten, retired guitarist Frank Sampedro, dearly departed pianist Jack Nitzsche and guitarist Nils Lofgren, have appeared on Young solo recordings.

Asked if there have been well-known Young solo songs that were first presented to Crazy Horse, Talbot says, “I’m sure there are. You know, I just can’t keep track of everything. Now, [during live shows] we do more of everything. We can play gentle songs by Neil or real rockers or medium ones. We can do it all, and we are doing it all.”

Whenever he teams with Crazy Horse, Young, known for his acoustic songcraft and ethereal vocals, becomes an electric warrior. See canyon-sized guitar gems like “Cinnamon Girl,” “Cortez the Killer” and “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black).”

Although they’ve played shows here and there, Neil Young & Crazy Horse are on their first full tour in around 10 years. Dubbed “Love Earth Tour,” the trek launched April 24 in San Diego.

To prep, Talbot spent a couple of months playing along to recordings in the home studio at the Zeona, South Dakota ranch where he and his wife reside. His nearest neighbor is about three miles away. Later on, there were two days of full band rehearsals in San Diego.

“But we know how to play all these songs,” Talbot says. “I mean, we’ve been playing them for years. We don’t have any new ones right now. But we’ve had some new ones through the years that we haven’t played yet out there in the public. I’m not sure what all will be in the set.”

Lofgren is currently on the road with Springsteen and the E Street Band. For “Love Earth Tour,” Crazy Horse is comprised of Talbot, Molina and Micah Nelson, son of country music legend Willie Nelson, on guitar. Of Micah Nelson, Talbot says, “He loves Neil Young songs, he knows them, and he has the right spirit. He fits right in.”

Born in New York, Talbot and his family moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles when he was 17. Now 80, Talbot’s wavy hair’s gray and closer cropped than it used to be. During our interview, he’s wearing a forest green shirt. Visible behind him when he checks in for our video call, three walls lined with paintings in gilded frames.

After moving to L.A., Talbot formed a doo-wop vocal group with Molina and Danny Whitten. “And then we decided to learn how to play instruments together,” Talbot recalls of his early years with Molina and Whitten. “I was playing piano, and Daniel was playing guitar and Ralph had a chair with a tambourine on one corner of the chair and a telephone book on the seat. And he’d be hitting them with [drum] sticks. And then we decided that I should probably be playing bass. So that’s how it wound up being that way.

“Everything was new. Rock and roll was at the advent of it and was just starting to get into what t became, you know, the sound from San Francisco, the sound from Los Angeles. It wasn’t there before so it was being created as we went along. Danny Witten brought Jimi Hendrix home one time at our place in Laurel Canyon. Things were like that in those days.”

In those days, Whitten began writing a song called “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” later covered by Rod Stewart for a Muscle Shoals-made 1977 hit. He also cowrote “(Come On Baby Let’s Go) Downtown,” originally released on Crazy Horse’s stand-alone 1971 self-titled debut album sans Young.

Unfortunately, Whitten, whose addiction struggles inspired Young’s lyrics to “Harvest” song “The Needle and the Damage Done,” died from an overdose in 1973. “He’s always present in my memories,” Talbot says fondly of Whitten. “He’s always there.”

But onstage with Neil Young & Crazy Horse, he says, “You can’t be thinking about stuff like that. I mean, there might be something that takes you there for a moment when you’re playing. But that’s not the forefront. We’re in the moment.”

Outside of Young’s iconoclastic music, Young’s passion for the environment, model trains and high-quality audio are well-documented. But what’s Neil Young the dude actually like?

“Well, he’s a real family man,” Talbot says. “And he’s very down to earth. At the same time is, his head is in the clouds — I mean, he’s an artist. And he’s developed as an artist, through the years, more and more, freer and freer. You can see it, you can feel it.

“He’s just been developing right in front of your eyes through all these years. He didn’t start out as great as he is. But he became as great as he is because it was destiny, for lack of a better word and that’s not a bad word.”

One thing Young doesn’t do, Talbot says, is keep in touch via text messages. “I don’t text either. But he calls me, and we talk on the phone — I like talking.”

Neil Young & Crazy Horse perform 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Orion Amphitheater in Huntsville, Alabama. Tickets star at $65 plus fees via the Orion Box Office, address 701 Amphitheater Drive N.W., and axs.com. More info at neilyoungarchives.com.

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