For Bruce Springsteen, this is a fine time for a look back even as he continues a European tour with his E Street band.

That’s because Aug. 26 marks the 50th anniversary of The Boss’s breakthrough album “Born to Run,” generally grouped among the greatest rock discs of all time and the one that catapulted him to stardom.

Come September the New York Film Festival premieres Jeremy Allen White (of “The Bear”) as Springsteen in a biopic that tracks the creation of his “Nebraska” album, “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.”

How and why “Born to Run” still endures, says Rutgers University historian Professor Louis Masur, is simple.

“There are albums that are revolutionary or strike at particular moments in particular times, and that have lasting value. Certainly ‘Born to Run’ is one of them.”

Masur, 68, has been Springsteen-struck since he saw him in concert at 16. He not only teaches a Springsteen class at Rutgers, he’s written an authoritative book: “Runaway Dream: Born to Run and Bruce Springsteen’s American Vision.”

“Part of the album’s power and success in 1975 was the moment in which it emerged, socially, culturally, historically. This kind of post-Vietnam, post-Watergate moment where people felt sapped and rock and roll itself was in the doldrums.

“All of the early excitement and energy and rebellion that was embodied from Elvis Presley in the mid ‘50s through the mid ‘60s had evaporated. Part of the genius of ‘Born to Run’ is what Springsteen did.

“He was schooled so well, encyclopedically almost, in the history of rock music. He took elements of the sounds and motifs of classic rock and roll, revived it, energized it.”

The Boss has been expressing his vision of America for 50 years. Did that change last spring when in concert in Manchester, England, he described the current U.S. administration as “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” and urged those who believe in democracy to “raise your voices against authoritarianism”?

“Not at all, not at all,” Masur said. “I think it’s a continuation. His life’s work has been examining the distance between American reality and the American dream, right? That’s the Springsteen quote from a press conference he gave.

“There are different aspects of the American Dream that he’s probing, and it’s not a constant. Fifty years is a long time, and his work and his vision has grown and changed. At some point he became much more overtly political than he was in 1975.

“But at the core is this engagement in: What does it mean to be American? What does it mean to be alive at any given moment? What is it that we’re all searching for?”

(Photo amazon.com)
(Photo amazon.com)