No matter where Neil Young wanders in his long and strange journey through life, he always comes back to Crazy Horse.

The poor band must feel like a favorite concubine in some faraway port. There's Mr. Bushy-burns - going off with his new alternative friends or talking about yet another Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young reunion, leaving his old buddies behind to fend for themselves. But Crazy Horse is loyal - God bless 'em - always ready to go on the road again the very minute he calls. And do they ask for any thanks? (What?! You went all that way and all you brought us was a lousy Pearl Jam T-shirt?). Crazy Horse guitarist Frank (Poncho) Sampedro has a more mature outlook these days.

"We all think of ourselves as Neil's band and Neil thinks of us as his band,"he says during a recent phone interview. "It used to be a little maddening in the old days when he would go off and play with other people. You'd go, `What did I do wrong? Why did he leave us behind?' But as I've gotten older and looked back on it all, I think Neil had more insight than the rest of us. It kept our music fresh and gave it integrity - and actually it's possible for us to continue playing now."

That's exactly what Neil Young and Crazy Horse will be doing this Thursday at the Coliseum - and playing better than they ever have in their lives, Poncho is not too modest to point out.

It does appear as though Crazy Horse is Young's favorite. In addition to using the band on this recent tour, he's recorded three of his last six albums with Crazy Horse, including the latest, Broken Arrow. Young should be grateful. That loose, garage-band style they first hammered out together in 1969 seems to have become popular again. Since Young was dubbed "the Grandfather of Grunge," shortly after 1990's Ragged Glory album, his career has soared to even greater heights.

Poncho laughs dryly: "We were never called grunge rockers in our lives until recently - we were grunge before there was grunge!

"Record execs tried to create this perception in the press that these grunge bands have found their background in music from us. But when I sit back and think about it for a minute, I can't imagine every grunge band in the United States buying Neil Young records, listening to them and saying, `We're going to sound like this.' I just have a feeling that there's some guys that got together and had two guitars and bass and drums in their garage - like we did - and they sounded something like us, and they're playing their hearts out. And that's what we do.

"On the other hand, you can listen to some of Neil Young's songs and say he sounds like Dylan. Where'd he get that harmonica idea? Maybe Dylan's the Godfather of Grunge and he just doesn't know it."

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Poncho, who has the plum day job of being the road manager for the Tonight Showband (with especially tolerant bosses who'll let him take three months off to tour), says he can explain Young's seeming unpredictability.

"There's more of a pattern than people want to realize," Poncho says. "He wants to express his music with different musicians, and different sounds that different bands can get. And rather than just constantly repeat himself until further notice, he goes out and seeks new things. When he runs into people that he can get along with and play a little music he enjoys, he'll make an album with them. A lot of the songs he'll be writing, I think, in his head, he'll go, `No, this is a Crazy Horse tune,' and he'll put it away for us. There are certain types of material that really suit us well. You don't catch him doing long jams with the country and western guys."

  Or CSN&Y.

Tickets to Thursday's concert - featuring Moist and Pete Droge and the Sinners as the opening acts - are still available through Ticketmaster (451-8000)