Purchase a book on reading guitar tablature (tab). You can also use a guitar website that offers free tab reading lessons. Tablature is a preferred music reading system for guitar players. It is written on a graph with six strings representing the strings of a guitar. Numbers written on these lines indicate the frets played to produce the correct note. Traditional note stems are used in conjunction with tab to indicate how long notes should be played. Many guitar players feel this is an easier, more logical approach to notating music for guitar, so quite a bit of easy electric guitar music is written in tablature format.
Learn as many chords as you can. Developing a good chord library will give you the basic tools needed for playing a wide variety of songs. A lot of sheet music for electric guitar is arranged simply, with chord symbols over lyrics. This makes it easy for beginning players to listen to a song to get a feel for the rhythm, then play the song by strumming the chords while he or she sings along. With a good chord repertoire, you will be able to play easy chord arrangements of just about any song someone puts in front of you. A good chord dictionary and a willingness to learn two or three new chords on your guitar a week is a great way to prepare you for playing simple songs. You can purchase a chord dictionary from a music store or use one of the many online chord dictionaries free of charge. Electric ballads are easy to play and many of them use the same chords and style. Try the classic Poison Song "Every Rose Has It's Thorn," which uses simple beginning chords. It is an easy song to play and a great one to sing along with.
In this exercise, try playing "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple. This is one of the easiest electric guitar songs you can play. It is a classic beginner's song. The tune is familiar. If you don't know it, find a recording of the song and give it a listen. You will have no trouble picking up on the rhythm and you might even want to sing along. The opening riff uses four basic opening chords that require two fingers to play. Another ideal starting song is the old classic "Wild Thing" by The Troggs, which uses a three-chord pattern over and over again. This one is fun to sing while you play.