FEW artists have enjoyed a career with the longevity and impact of Bruce Springsteen. He is one of the great music artists of the past 60 years, not far below Elvis, The Beatles and Bob Dylan as a performer and songwriter.

Although I am not a Springsteen obsessive – I have not bothered with some recent albums – no other artist has moved me so often with their passion, humour and resonance.

Now showing on Netflix, Springsteen On Broadway is a film version of his solo run in New York, an intimate show where he played to hundreds each night instead of stadiums filled with 80,000 people, his usual terrain.

Bruce is touching 70, but for the most part he looks fantastic: his hair is receding and greying at the sideburns, and his jaw line droops a little, but years of fitness training have kept him trim and lithe. His voice, however, is much diminished, a throaty rasp that stops him from singing as well or as high as he used to before it wore out.

Some songs here feature a detuned guitar so he can reach the notes. This is a great shame. By comparison, Cliff Richard has kept his voice in better shape.

What Bruce can do, though, is tell a story, and much of Springsteen On Broadway is dominated by monologues about his own life and adventures. In particular, he focuses on the town of Freehold in New Jersey, where he grew up, and the family members and friends that he knew and loved.

The show is suffused with a quiet grief: his father's depression and passing; the Alzheimer's of his aged mother; and the deaths of friends he knew when he was young, including Bart Haynes, the drummer in his first band, The Castiles. Haynes went to Vietnam and didn't come back.

I get the feeling Springsteen knows his best years are behind him, and the show – and his 2016 autobiography, Born To Run – are evidence of a man entering his twilight years and reviewing his life. "I miss the blank page, the feeling that anything can happen in the future," he says.

There's a powerful sense of imperfect spirituality, as he ponders the big questions about life and art and what it means to be in the world. "Please be seated," he tells the audience near the end, before reciting the Lord's Prayer (Springsteen was brought up in a devout Catholic environment).

At the close, the lights dim and Bruce taps on his guitar, a heartbeat in the dark. Life may not last forever, he seems to say, but there's always passion and energy. You could say other artists had better voices, or could pull a dance groove better, but nobody has entwined their life and art as passionately as Springsteen; he is fiercely holistic, and it's partly why his audience is so devoted. Springsteen's best work may be in the past, but he will always be The Boss.

Miles Salter, York writer, musician and storyteller