Story Song Structure (4): Night Train

So I mentioned a couple posts back that the framing device, the chorus typically, can be inverted. That is, instead of the frame lying somehow outside of the throughline of the story, the frame now becomes the center of the song and the storyline now outside of how things are going.

Lyrically, that doesn't make much sense just reading the lyrics. This is where the songwriter, or the poet, use audio cues to invert the meaning and direction of the song.

Sometimes it's because of meaning, or just because.

Here, with Night Train (link here), Axl inverts the frame with the story for a subtle reason: it's a train song, which has its own rules and traditions.

He starts off similarly to what I've pointed out before: let the chorus frame the story, then we're off and running... and that's where the train song tradition kicks in, because now it's the music and the rhythm...

and we're hellbound and rolling.