07-08-2025
Why a Blaine man built a giant guitar visible from the sky in his backyard
In the land of Prince and Bob Dylan, there's a music tribute that you can see from the sky.
On his five-acre property in Blaine, Minnesota, Erik Lund has plenty of space to fine-tune his golf game and his guitar game.
"That one I bought out of California and that one is a 2550," said Lund. "Collector's edition gig."
He's had a love for music his entire life. In the big hairband days of the 80's, Lund was a drummer and a lead singer for a band called Bad Credit which was a shout-out to their credit scores at the time.
"Yeah, I was blessed with great hair. I bleached it white, and we rocked," said Lund.
But his favorite guitar is one that doesn't make a sound. Wanting to pay tribute to rock 'n' rollers who inspired him, like Jimmy Page and Randy Rhoads, he got the idea to build a work of art in his backyard.
"I just thought, I've always wanted to do something weird like that, and why not," said Lund.
He used his Les Paul guitar as a template, laid out a design on his lawn, then dug it up and had concrete poured into the shape of his six-string. He added a metal fire pit where the guitar pick-ups would be.
The concrete guitar is 22 feet wide and 72 feet long, making it easy to see from the sky. Especially with an airport just a few miles away.
And that's noteworthy, because an aerial image of the guitar showed up on Zillow, and then on the Facebook page Quirky Minnesota. where it's gotten nearly 2,000 likes. People loved the mystery and mystique with some speculating that Bob Dylan lived there.
"I made a couple of comments on there saying, oh yeah, it doesn't really belong to anybody famous," said Lund. "The neighbors don't even know it's here."
He was never seeking attention for this. But if the view from up top gets people thinking about rock 'n' roll, then he knows he struck the right chords.
"It is different and if somebody sees it they are going to go wow, that is different," said Lund. "It's just for the musicians. For the guys that spend all that time doing that. And the ones that are ultra-talented."
Lund said he hopes to add more parts to the guitar in the future. He also wanted to thank Kurt's Construction for all the time they spent pouring concrete for his crazy idea.
