Rembrandts Don't Want to Be 1-Hit Wonder

DULUTH, Minn. (AP) _ Phil Solem didn't want to be known as a one-hit wonder, but it will be hard to think otherwise when the final episode of ``Friends'' airs Thursday and viewers hear him

Thursday, May 6th 2004, 11:00 am

By: News On 6

DULUTH, Minn. (AP) _ Phil Solem didn't want to be known as a one-hit wonder, but it will be hard to think otherwise when the final episode of ``Friends'' airs Thursday and viewers hear him sing the show's theme song.

Solem and his band, The Rembrandts, were approached by a ``Friends'' producer in 1994. They wrote 45 seconds of material with five other writers, intending to stay anonymous.

But fans of ``I'll Be There for You'' had different ideas.

``A radio guy in Nashville _ I don't know if I love him or hate him _ looped the 45 seconds into a three-minute song, and people were all over it,'' Solem, a native of Duluth, said from his home in Sherman Oaks, Calif.

``Our record label said we had to finish the song and record it. There was no way to get out of it,'' said Solem, who has written reams of music in his 47 years.

Without the song, The Rembrandts may not have sold as many albums, Solem said. But there was a downside: ``We lost a lot of hard-core, original fans because they thought we'd decided to take the easy way, but we felt forced to be press monkeys.''

After the ``Friends'' buzz waned for The Rembrandts, the band broke up. When they reunited, the music industry wasn't interested. But the ``Friends'' finale put them back in the spotlight.

On Tuesday, the band released a compact disc of rerecorded greatest hits, ``Choice Picks,'' on Solem's label, Akee Records.