Anything is possible in the land of Neil Young with Crazy Horse — just ask Nils Lofgren.

"It took me 50 years to get a tap dancing credit on a Neil Young record, but it was worth the wait and it was a great laugh," Lofgren — the guitarist, keyboard player, singer/songwriter and yes, tap dancer — told the Asbury Park Press and USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey this week.

Lofgren contributes a bit of softshoe rhythm, an element of his own live shows for years, to the lovely, tender track "Eternity" on "Colorado." Due out Friday, Oct. 25, via Reprise Records from Neil Young with Crazy Horse, it's the band's first album since 2012's "Psychedelic Pill."

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It's also the latest step in a creative dance between Lofgren and Young that's lasted, on and off, for half a century, and their first studio album together since Young's 1982 LP "Trans."

Lofgren — who'd played on Crazy Horse's Young-less self-titled 1971 LP after his work on Young's 1970 classic "After The Gold Rush" — was re-enlisted in the band in 2018, filling in for the unavailable Frank "Poncho" Sampedro.

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With the eternal Crazy Horse rhythm section of Billy Talbot on bass and Ralph Molina on drums, the quartet played five shows in California followed by two in Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada last year.

The process of preparing for those rehearsal-free California gigs, Lofgren said, was similar to how he'd immersed himself in the Bruce Springsteen canon upon joining the E Street Band in 1984.

"When I joined E Street, the first thing I did was study Stevie (Van Zandt)'s (guitar) parts, study Bruce's parts and start there, because I knew they worked, but try to put my own thing into it so it just didn't sound like me being a cover guitarist," Lofgren said.

Similarly, when it came time to re-join Crazy Horse, Lofgren studied the work of both Sampedro and singer/guitarist Danny Whitten, who died in 1972.

"You start with those things," Lofgren said, "and you bring your own thing to it and you just play off it."

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The quartet entered a recording studio in the Rocky Mountains to record "Colorado" with Young's co-producer, John Hanlon.

The fly-on-the-wall documentary "Mountaintop," released in conjunction with the album, details all of the work that goes into creating Crazy Horse's precisely ragged brand of rock 'n' roll.

"We never rehearsed at all, really," Lofgren said. "We just had these demos and per Neil's instruction, which totally makes sense, he said, 'Please familiarize yourself with the song and the (chord) changes but don't work out parts, we'll do that together."

Lofgren and the rest of Young's band largely played live in the studio on "Gold Rush" — and the same piano he played on that album returns on "Colorado" — but he said the latest experience was reminiscent of his work with Young, Molina and Talbot on 1975's "Tonight's the Night."

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That LP, produced by the late David Briggs, was described by Lofgren as "our wake album, if you will. All of our friends were dying, and heroes, Danny at the top of the list.

"But (Young) and David, I still remember, they came to us and said, 'Look, this is going to be an anti-production record, we don't even want you to learn the songs too well, and when Neil gets the vocal performance right everyone's done. No one's going to be allowed to fix a single note, so stay down in it, just every second, because that's kind of like the rules here and the vision.'"

Nearly 45 years later, Lofgren said the creative process for "Colorado" was very much the same.

"The goal was really once we were ready to sing and play and hear each other and see each other properly, it was probably two, three takes, (then) we'd be done," he said.

How does Lofgren, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the E Street Band in 2014, think the leadership styles of his two most famous bosses compare?

"At the end of the day, the truth is they're very similar," Lofgren said of Springsteen and Young. "They really give you a lot of freedom to play what you're feeling and hearing. They really don't want to micromanage much. They want to hear what you're hearing, and then they may go, 'Why don't you try an acoustic or why don't you try this?'

"But they don't micromanage much. They give you freedom to play what you're feeling and they kind of take it seriously and listen to it and evaluate it before they start giving you suggestions, and I love that about them. Like Neil says, 'Let's just have an experience man. Don't think, just play what you feel, let's start with that.' And that's an overriding thing for both of them that I find very freeing and beautiful."

Amidst his Crazy Horse duties Lofgren released the solo album "Blue With Lou," featuring a number of songs he wrote with Lou Reed, in April.

He said there are currently no specific plans on the books for either Neil Young with Crazy Horse or Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

"I personally wish, in my fantasy of course, it would be great if the great Neil Young and Bruce Springtseen said, 'Nils, why don't you plan our year for us?' Because then I'd have both bands playing a lot with me in them," he said. "But that won't happen, so we'll just have to take it as it comes."

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