Hundreds of bagpipers have made history in Melbourne’s Fed Square, breaking the world record for the largest ever bagpipe ensemble.<\/p>\n
A crowd of thousands gathered in the CBD to watch 374 bagpipers play along to AC\/DC\u2019s It\u2019s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll), shattering the world record.<\/p>\n
The previous record was held by 333 bagpipers, who gathered at Sofia, Bulgaria in May 2012.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Several school bands were in attendance to help push the numbers to a record-breaking 374. (ABC News)<\/p>\n
For a few hours on Wednesday afternoon, Fed Square became a sea of tartan, as pipers from across the city came to contribute their pipes to the world record attempt.<\/p>\n
The new world record came nearly 50 years after the filming of AC\/DC’s iconic music video for It\u2019s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll), which took place nearby.<\/p>\n
The music video, filmed along Swanston Street in Melbourne’s CBD, featured lead singer Bon Scott playing alongside bagpipers from the Rats of Tobruk Pipe Band.<\/p>\n
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One of the pipers in the AC\/DC video is Les Kenfield, who first joined the Rats of Tobruk in 1970.<\/p>\n
Despite having played alongside one of Australia’s greatest ever rock bands, he admitted he had jitters before the big performance on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“I always get nervous when I have to perform for the public, I can’t help it,” Mr Kenfield said.<\/p>\n
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Les Kenfield is ready to play the bagpipes, 49 years after performing in AC\/DC’s iconic music video. (ABC News)<\/p>\n
He said he hoped the world record would serve as a jolt in the arm for the piping community and revive interest in the art form.<\/p>\n
“Piping is really a dying art, young kids don’t really want to play, [whether] it’s too difficult or whatever reasons,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We’re getting old. In my band, if everyone over 70 resigned, there would be no band left.”<\/p>\n
There were a few young faces to be seen at Fed Square though, including piper Charli Millar.<\/p>\n
“I love the pipes, and we needed as many people as we could to play, so I thought I’d play,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It’s going to be so cool.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Charli Millar says she hopes the event will encourage people to take up the bagpipes.<\/p>\n
Craig Richardson did not know about the world record attempt until a friend texted him about it a few weeks ago, and he knuckled down to practice.<\/p>\n
“I’ve never broken a world record before, so I thought: if I’m going to break one, then today is the day,” he said.<\/p>\n
Campbell Wilson is the Senior Pipe Major of the City of Melbourne Highland Pipe Band\u00a0and one of the organisers of the world record attempt.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said bands across the state had been practising for weeks in the lead-up to the attempt.<\/p>\n
“The biggest challenge is absolutely getting everybody to play in tune because bagpipes are essentially four instruments in one,” Mr Wilson said.<\/p>\n
“If you multiply that by however many we end up having today, then that’s probably the biggest challenge.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of bagpipers have made history in Melbourne’s Fed Square, breaking the world record for the largest ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[21089,162008,129299,43,44,41,39,42,40,24862],"class_list":["post-279511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-acdc","tag-bagpipes","tag-fed-square","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-world-record"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}