On a Melbourne street where AC/DC filmed one of rock's most unlikely hits nearly 50 years ago, 374 bagpipes played that same song in unison. The performance at Federation Square shattered the previous world record of 333 pipers, set in Bulgaria in 2012.
The song — "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)" — was an odd pairing from the start: a hard rock band and a Scottish instrument that shouldn't have worked together. It did. The 1975 original featured lead singer Bon Scott on bagpipes alongside three pipers from the Rats of Tobruk Memorial Pipes and Drums. That collaboration became iconic enough that when organizers wanted to attempt a world record, they chose this song.
What made the record attempt feel less like a novelty stunt was the genuine mission behind it. Les Kenfield, one of the original pipers from that 1975 music video, came to play because he's watching bagpiping fade. "Piping is really a dying art; young kids don't really want to play," he told the ABC. "In my band, if everyone over 70 resigned, there would be no band left." Kevin Conlon, another piper from the original video, also showed up.
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Start Your News DetoxBut the record-breaker wasn't just nostalgia. Fourteen-year-old Charli Millar, who's loved the pipes since she was four, played too. She represents the thing Kenfield worries about most — the next generation actually showing up. "I love the pipes, and we needed as many people as we could to play, so I thought I'd play," she said.
The pipers ranged across generations, united by an instrument most of their peers have abandoned. After the record was confirmed by the Australian Book of Records, they played "Happy Birthday" and "Amazing Grace" in the square, an impromptu celebration that felt almost like a small victory for a dying tradition.
The record attempt happened just days before AC/DC's first Australian concert in a decade at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The band played so loudly that seismographs two miles away picked up the ground vibrations — the same instruments that detect earthquakes registered the sound waves as physical tremors. "The sound waves that people were experiencing nearby and feeling through their bodies, that's the equivalent to what our seismographs feel," said Adam Pascale, chief scientist at Australia's Seismology Research Center.
Two events, separated by days, both happening in the same city. One was about preserving something old. The other was about the sheer force of something that never really dies.
