QUESTIONS & ANSWERS & MUTUAL PRAISE

Norman Warwick hears

QUESTIONS, ANSWERS AND PRAISE

for his friend Larry Yaskiel

We have often written about  Larry Yaskiel on these pages. There has, after all, been a lot in his life to write about.

As a younger man he advanced through the pop and rock music industry from being a night club doorman in Germany to rise to the top in the industry. This was in the Beatles era as they learned their trade and honed their craft before returning to England.

Eventually, Larry became a record label executive with the newly formed A&M records, where he worked closely with Herb Alpert who was one of the two partners to form the company. Larry was a busy man in what was the life-changing recording industry. He met artists like Jimi Hendrix and Tom Jones. He was, and is, a great fan of guitarist Peter Frampton.

Forty years ago, when he retired from the music industry Larry and his wife Liz came to settle here on the island of Lanzarote. He and a few other like-minded people established the classy and glossy quarterly magazine Lancelot, a publication that has now been extolling, for forty years, the climate and scenery of Lanzarote and the friendly, smiling and always optimistic ethos of its people. That can-do attitude has arisen from the stoicism with which the then very small island-population faced the ruination of their life styles and economy when the volcanoes erupted in the seventeen thirties of the last millennium.

My wife and I arrived here in 2015, around thirty years after Mr & Mrs Yaskiel. I, too, had lived my working life in the UK in the music industry, with considerably less success than Larry, of whom we were aware of because on holidays here we had always purchased a copy of Lancelot. We had not been here too long before we saw that Larry had written a biography of his work in Germany and that the book was being launched here on Lanzarote. We joined a large and appreciative audience in a reception room at a grand hotel in Playa Blanca. We spoke to Larry and Liz at the event and I introduced myself as a freelance music journalist. Twelve months later I interviewed him for the first time about his biography and published the interview in Lanzarote Information which also celebrates the ethos of the Lanzarote people and the island´s characterful scenery.

When he published his second book, about the real connections between the Canary Island and Great Britain I was able to place that interview in a couple of outlets on Lanzarote and even in my old home town of Rochdale.

A friendship has grown over the years. I´d like to think there is a mutual respect shared between Larry and I, even as Dee and Liz shake their heads in despair as we husbands talk rock and roll almost exclusively. I think Larry and I have just about acknowledged that there are other things in life, but nevertheless our conversations seem to flow to where the music takes us.

Larry will be 88 in October, and although I consider myself a young apprentice at 72, the truth is that we are drinking the last of the summer wine. We met up with Larry and Liz last week and they have some exciting times ahead as a new British Ambassador to Spain is coming to post. Larry has worked for, or with, previous holders of the position and has been rewarded with an MBE for his services. Dee and I were hugely privileged to be invited to attend his reception party on the day of his award presentation here on Lanzarote.

We remembered that occasion during our recent coffee and carrot cake and conversation morning with Larry and Liz at The Cafe In The Plaza in Puerto Calero. We spoke of the most shocking current global atrocities for a couple of minutes, when somehow Larry slipped the name of Chuck Berry into the conversation.

With each of us taking different routes (and roots) to progress on this journey from the blues to contemporary rock we somehow always arrive at a conversational crossroads at the same time. We were therefore able to move along from Chuck Berry to Keith Richards To Jagger to, …etc etc.

When Liz and Dee realised that Larry and I would be neither deterred or detoured on our musical pilgrimage of a chat, they decided to hitch their wagons to our star, and made their own contributions. Dee talked Motown, in the shape of Diana Ross & The Supremes, while Liz, to my amazement spoke of Canadian artist Robin Thicke and his huge, but controversial hit with Blurred Lines.

You all know that ´the lonesome picker´ loves a playlist so I sent him a summary of our conversation based only on the names of artists or songs that we four mentioned during what Paul Simon might have called our ´dangling´ conversation.

As we concluded our magical mystery tour Larry told us that, to celebrate Canary Islands Day, the head of the English Department at Las Maretas, Arrecife School, Olga Betancort invited Lancelot editor Larry to conduct a Question and Answer session with pupils on the contents of his book The British Connection which forms part of the English language education syllabus.  He told us he was delighted with the high standard of English of the students and their knowledgeable comments on the various subjects.  Among members of the staff there were some who contributed to the new video on the book´s contents with the pupils as actors.

There was even a Tribute in “Jameos” the Online Annual Magazine of the Canarian Government

The Central Board of Lanzarote Teachers, CEP, paid tribute to Larry and Liz Yaskiel for leaving their iconic mark on our island for over forty years. 

“Since arriving on Lanzarote in 1980 they have played their role as the best possible ambassadors of our native isle, promoting its culture, history and the beauty of its natural attractions among the local Anglo Saxon community and even further afield.”

So, we came to the end of our magical, mystery tour that had let a morning drift by with a half hour drive to the venue, an hour´s chat, and then a half hour drive home.

So I have reported on our conversation, and I realise that might be quite unexciting, especially for those who enjoy water skiing, buggy riding or deep sea fishing.

Puerto Calero, is a busy, bustling harbour of sleek and graceful yachts owned by wealthy ladies and gentlemen. Most of these yachts will have travelled thousands of sea miles and will have arrived on the crest of a wave to take their berth in the large harbour surrounded by beautiful restaurants and cliff top walks to Playa Quemada in one direction and to Puerto del Carmen in the other.

The open air plaza in which we held our Pop Master conversation / quiz  (in the sense that we are always secretly trying to score points by talking of a record / artist the others haven´t heard of,) has the Café area we were sitting in and there is a fairly large and very good restaurant opposite.

It is a gentile place, sitting on a hill above the harbour. It is pretty quiet, except that the wind whistles through riggings of the yachts creating a tubular bells style symphony performance.

There is always something to catch your eye as you concentrate on your coffee and carrot cake.  You can see friends meeting up as we were doing and greeting each effusively. There are men running across the square making delivers of food and drink to the restaurants.

The owners of neighbouring shops frequently step out of the premises to chat to friends and customers and even join them for a coffee.

There´s a fairly constant stream of cars fifty yards away driving down to the massive car parks, one to the left half way down the hill, Egrets, dancing and prancing and their blinding all white uniform, seemingly unflappable until they suddenly depart in flight. There are planes from all over the world coming in overhead, and at the tables many people are reading their favourite crime writer on Kindle. Down below the Water Taxi is ´ferrying´ people to and from along the coastline.

It is all quiet and serene but Lanzarote is a place where nothing and everything happens as one.

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