‘Friends’ To Have Theme Song On Popular Nbc Comedy Show Catapults Rembrandts Into The Limelight

Your job’s a joke. You’re broke. Your love life’s DOA. And two guys are singing about it on the radio.

That is, if you’re one of the six main characters on “Friends,” the smash NBC comedy that airs Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. Its theme song, “I’ll Be There for You,” has given a great boost to the Rembrandts.

The duo has found itself at No. 1 on Billboard’s pop airplay chart for more than a month. “L.P.,” their third album and the tune’s home, has hovered comfortably around the Top 30 sellers nationwide since its release about six weeks ago.

All this for a track that began as a 42-second, one-verse ode backing the opening credits of “Friends.”

Extended to a full three-minute verse/chorus/ verse extravaganza, “I’ll Be There for You” wasn’t even listed on initial pressings of “L.P.”

“It’s a single as far as radio is concerned,” says Phil Solem, the singer/guitarist who shares Rembrandt-hood with Danny Wilde.

“It’s an album cut as far as we’re concerned.”

Officially, there is no “I’ll Be There” single.

“We want to move some albums,” Solem admits.

Though the song fits thematically among some of “L.P.’s” lighter moments, Solem sees its hand-clapping, guitar-driven peppiness as merely “an aspect of our sound, if you want to distill it down to one thing. We’ve never been that pure pop.”

True enough. Some of the other highlights of “L.P.” are much more ambivalent toward relationships.

“End of the Beginning,” the record’s moody opener, for instance, has benefited from adultalternative stations’ willingness to air “stuff that wouldn’t be your typical single,” as Solem puts it. “Things that are more experimental.”

In fact, Solem bets that in radio’s current smarts-ready climate, the Rembrandts would be something of a hot item even without “Friends.”

“It’s kind of the cream, the icing on the cake for me,” he says. “I think even if this single hadn’t been on there, we’d do all right. But this single has changed the course of our careers.”

The group’s Beatle-esque pop had previously given it a medium-size hit with 1991’s “Just the Way It Is, Baby.”

Is Solem surprised by the Rembrandts’ ascension to semihousehold-name status?

“Shock is a better word,” he says. “We were asked to do the theme just a few days before the show went on. After a couple of weeks, people started searching out who did the theme song, and then DJs began looping the television version.”

Solem is also pleased by the cut’s reception from several different radio formats.

“It’s surprising not only to have a song added at the last minute but to add it and have it go completely across the board,” Solem said. “You can hear it on an alternative station and then a light (rock) station and a Top 40.”

Many of those diverse listeners may turn out to see the outfit on tour, first on its own this summer and then as the opener for Sheryl Crow in the fall.

Even before hitting the road, promotional duties have been calling. In fact, though they’re “Friends” fans, Solem and Wilde hardly have time to watch the show to which they owe so much.

“I can’t say we’ve seen every episode. We’ve been really busy,” Solem said.