In the world of music, two of this year’s seemingly endless losses happened within a fortnight of each other. Both led to outpourings of appreciation and reminiscence centred on an invention that is heading towards its 100th birthday: the electric guitar, that enduring symbol of noise, excitement, and the basic human urge to express yourself. Wilko Johnson – born John Wilkinson, in 1947 – passed away on 21 November. By the time of his death, he had become a kind of left-field national treasure, portrayed in two feature-length documentaries, and given a silent part in the huge TV show Game of Thrones. His obituaries told the story of his roots in Canvey Island, on the Thames estuary, and a later phase of life that had included the resurrection-like experience of being diagnosed with late-stage cancer in 2012, only to be apparently cured. But what really mattered were the two key things he had brought to the prophetic 1970s rhythm and blues band Dr Feelgood: songs that beautifully romanticised where he was from (their first album was titled Down By the Jetty), and a unique way of playing his instrument. Johnson was fond of saying that his guitar technique was like riding a bike – easy to do, but almost impossible to describe. The whole of his right hand went constantly back and forth across the strings and produced the percussive rhythm that drove the music along, while his left fingered the licks and trills that filled the gaps in between. The result was one guitarist sounding like two. Better still, Johnson pioneered an insistent, trebly sound that sounded like distilled nervous energy, which then became part of rock music’s basic vocabulary. Keith Levene, who died on 11 November, was 10 years younger than Johnson, and a much more experimental figure. Whereas the older man had laid the ground for punk, Levene achieved renown in its slipstream, following a very brief spell in the Clash with a central role in Public Image Ltd (AKA PiL), the project John Lydon founded after the Sex Pistols. Levene’s self-declared mission was to “make the guitar do cool things” and “use it in different ways”, often with the help of technology. Among the results was what defined PiL’s first single, Public Image: as the English musician Andy Bell recently described it, “a guitar tone like ground-up diamonds, fired at you through a high-pressure hose”. Like Johnson, Levene did what great guitar players do at particular points in history, re-energising the instrument so much that what he played sounded like the future. On the face of it, the electric guitar ought to have long since become an outmoded antique. This year marked the 90th birthday of the first commercially available electric guitar – an aluminium, Hawaiian-style creation known as “the frying-pan” – and the 70th anniversary of the Gibson Les Paul, a model that still sits at the very top of the instrument’s pecking order. This year also marked the 80th anniversary of the death of Charlie Christian, the American jazz maestro who pioneered the electric guitar as an instrument that could be used for solos; and the 60th anniversary of the first single by the Beatles, who ushered in the musical age that it completely dominated. All these things happened long ago, and the guitar’s fashionableness has since waxed and waned, but somehow, it always comes back. Four years ago, there was renewed talk about the guitar being on its way out. But then something happened: lockdowns across the world, which prompted thousands of people to buy one and set about learning to play. In March 2020, the Fender guitar company offered 100,000 free sign-ups to its online tuition service, Fender Play, and hit that number on the offer’s first day. By June, they were up to nearly one million: 20% of the new learners were under 24, 70% were under 45, and female users amounted to 45% of the recruits, compared with 30% pre-pandemic. Acoustic guitars were a sizeable part of the surge, but Fender also saw sales of its electric guitars soar. By November of that year, they had announced a 17% increase in trade, and the biggest year of “sales volume” in Fender history. Other manufacturers reported the same kind of uplift: late last year, one industry insider said that its prospects were suddenly “brighter than during the post-Beatles era.” I think I know why all this has happened. It takes me back to a Christmas 40 years ago, when my parents bowed to the inevitable and gave me a black imitation Les Paul my dad had acquired for £30. The ratio between the proficiency of the learner and the noise they are able to make made it a pleasingly accessible instrument; playing it, I quickly discovered, was a thrillingly physical experience, all taut strings and painful fingertips. Reaching the point where it felt like the guitar was channelling your thoughts and feelings took long hours of practice. But the guitar’s rudiments seemed to lock on to my brain without any conscious thought. It also looked great: an object invented in the 1950s that had miraculously escaped appearing dated or kitsch. That still holds true. Better still, the electric guitar has shaken off its once-indelible associations with male rock stars, and become something much more universal, arguably put to more interesting uses by women. Levene was part of that evolution, mentoring Viv Albertine of the punk group the Slits, who would later recall shared bouts of what the two of them called “guitar depression”: “being frustrated from learning to play an instrument, [and] how you try to feed your personality through it.” It could be a trying experience, she said, “where you start doubting your own ability … but given the right circumstances, it does come out.” There has been plenty of evidence in 2022 of how that kind of magic happens. One of the best albums of the year is by Wet Leg, the guitar-playing duo whose clipped, insistent songs archly deal with the trials and absurdities of modern twentysomething life, and contains distant echoes of what Johnson, Levene, Albertine et al brought to music. I would also recommend the latest record by Big Joanie, a black, avowedly feminist trio from London who make punk-influenced music that somehow seems both familiar and refreshingly new. Their singer and guitar player, Stephanie Phillips, got her first instrument for her 16th birthday, decided formal lessons were “a bit too strict”, and set about blazing her own trail. Here, once again, is the democratic magic of six strings, two hands, an electric current – and a method of self-expression as perfect as it has always been. John Harris is a Guardian columnist