Arctic Monkeys – Beneath The Boardwalk

The name Beneath the Boardwalk originated when the first batch of demos were sent around on the Internet. The first sender, wanting to classify the demos, named them after the club where he received them, the Boardwalk in Sheffield — a since defunct venue where the Arctic Monkeys used to play gigs and Alex Turner used to work. Slowly, as more demos were spread online, they were all classified under this name. This has led to many people falsely believing that Beneath the Boardwalk was an early album, or that the early demos were all released under this heading.

In a 2005 interview with Prefix Magazine, Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders said:

"We used to record demos and then just burn them onto CDs and give them away at gigs. Obviously there weren't many demos available, so people used to share them on the Internet, which was a good way for everyone to hear it. So we used to share — not us personally, we don't even know how to do it — but fans did. There's a guy who has come along to film us — two guys, actually; one of them is the main guy who put the songs on the Internet. So the fans just used to send them to each other, which didn't bother us because we never made those demos to make money or anything. We were giving them away free anyway — that was a better way for people to hear them. And it made the gigs better, because people knew the words and came and sang along. We can't complain about it."