Recovery without using the AI was standard when I was taught to fly on instruments. The reason was simple; it was vacuum driven and when it reached 60 degrees of pitch or bank it hit the internal stops, got lost and toppled. Until manually re-erected it just waved woefully as it drifted from stop to stop.
You learnt to recover, even from spins, using limited panel; airspeed, rate of turn, RCDI and altimeter. Firstly in radial engine fixed wing and then later, without the spins, in radial engine helicopters but you wouldn't catch me trying to fly IMC with just an AI.